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MAKING 

THE 

FASCIST STATE 



Fortune^ being a woman^ is always a lover of 
young men y for they are less cautious y more violent y 
and with more audacity command her. 

(Machiavelli: The Prince. Ch. xxv.) 



MAKING'tttE 
FASCIST STATE 


NEW YORK 

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 

LONDON TORONTO MELBOURNE BOMBAY 

MCMXXVIII 



Copyright, 1928, By 
Oxford University Press, 
New York, Inc. 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



FOREWORD 

This book is the result of studies carried on in Italy during 1926-7 
when I was a Fellow of the National Social Science Research Council. 
The generosity of this Council and the kindly interest of its President, 
Professor Charles E. Merriam, have made this work possible. 

My guiding aim in this study was to investigate the construction 
of fascist theories in terms of the varying practical situations into 
which the movement was forced by dint of circumstances. The fascist 
mind and imagination hold the foreground of this picture, while 
enough of the political history and economic problems of the movement 
is brought Into the background to make clear how the fascisti intended 
their ideas to be applied. The interaction between fact and philosophic 
fiction, between practical exigencies and social theories, between mind 
and body, forms the dominant theme of the following Interpretation of 
fascism. To the practical politicians both within and without the move- 
ment the greater part of this ideology is mere froth. But to the student 
of the workings of the human mind such froth Is not negligible. Philos- 
ophies may not reveal the ultimate and universal nature of things, 
nor are they prime movers; but they are significant symptoms of social 
pathology and entertaining forms of human energy. I make this ex- 
plicit statement here of my method, to save the reader the trouble of 
discovering for himself that this book is intended as both more and less 
than a history of fascism; it is a laboratory study of the mind and 
imagination at work. 

I have been helped more than I can well express by distinguished 
Italians, by ex-ministers, senators and many others actively engaged in 
politics, whom I should like to name here, were it prudent under the 
present political circumstances to do so. But in order not to repay their 
kindness by causing them embarrassment, I content myself with ac- 
knowledging my indebtedness to them collectively. I wish to express 
my appreciation to various fascist officials, to librarians, to university 
administrators, and to Italians generally, for their courteous and hos- 
pitable treatment of an inquisitive stranger. 

To my colleagues, Professors John Dewey, John J. Coss and DIno 
Bigonglari, I am. indebted for their encouragement, advice and criti- 
cism. To Carol Smith Schneider, who has written and rewritten all of 
this many times, and who has seen the manuscript through its many 
stages and vicissitudes, the reader owes more than he realizes, and I 
more than I can say. H W S 


Columbia University 
May 1928, 




TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Chapter I 


WAR AND EMPIRE 

I. Interventionism. Nationalism or imperialism: the dilemma of 
Italian pre-war foreign policy The Tripoli War of 1911 
(2); The New Italy (3); The philosophy of the Nationalists 
(4); Patriotic socialist opposition to imperialism (6); In- 
terventionists (7); Mussolini bolts (8); II Popolo d^Italia 
(10); Fasci d^a%ione rivoluzionaria (13). IL Down with 
Parliament. Impatience (15); War Discipline (15). HI. 
Imperial Rome. Victorious Italy (17) ; The great humiliation 
(17) ; The War Party saves Its face (19) ; The Moral Primacy 
of Italy (20); Nationalist recovery (24); The New Roman 
Empire (25). IV. Fascist Foreign Policy. The Prime 
Minister’s first concern (27); The League of Plutocratic 
Nations (28); Sea power (30); East versus West (30); The 
Latin versus the Anglo-Saxon world (30) ; France, the arch- 
enemy (33); The Balkan game (34); Expand or explode 
(35); International morality (37); The heroic people (39). 


Chapter II 


REVOLUTIONS 

L Squadrism. Agrarian socialism (42); Aftermath of the War 
(43); Violent defense (44); Reds versus Blacks (45); Puni- 
tive expeditions (46) ; Government neutrality (46) . IL Local 
Color. Romagna (47); Bologna (47); Ferrara (48); Cre- 
mona (49); Italia redenta (50); Florence (50); Siena (52); 
Perugia (52); The South (54). III. Milan Fascism. Young 
intellectuals (SS); Futurist fasci (55); The first fascio di 
combattimento (56); Mussolini, 1919 (56); The Program of 
1919 (58); Defeat (61); Factory occupation (61). IV. War 
on Bolshevism. Some battles (64); Mussolini, 1920 (66); 
Marinetti bolts (67); Political gypsies (67); Flume (68).. 
V. The Fascist Party. Beginnings of the hierarchy (68); 

* Figures in parentheses represent page folios in the text. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

The political game (70); In Parliament (71); The Gentle- 
man of the Right (72) ; The republican urge (73) ; The Pact 
of Pacification (74); The National Fascist Party (75); The 
Militia (78); Rest and restiveness (79). VI. The Fascist 
Revolution. Parliamentary crisis (79); Fascist demands 
(80); The March on Rome (81); Afterthoughts (82). 


Chapter III 


THE FASCIST STATE 

I. Mussolini and his Parliament. The Coalition Cabinet {85) ; 
Mussolini introduces himself (86); Favorably impressed 
(86); Fascist coalition (87); Electoral reform (88); The 
plebiscite (89); Parliament functions (90); Fatherly advice 
(91); Murder (91); The Aventine secession (92); Fascism 
stands alone (93); Constitutional reform (94); War on the 
Aventine (95)5 War on the press (95); War on Masonry 
(96) ; Squadrist warfare (97); The opposition vanishes (97) ; 
The Rump functions admirably (98). 11 . Foundations of 
THE Fascist State. Judicial reform (99) ; Reform of the 
bureaucracy (99) ; The work of the Solons (99) ; Executive 
power (100) ; Local administration (100). III. The Theory 
OF THE Fascist State. Democracy, Italy’s scapegoat (loi) ; 
Nationalist theory (102); Idealist theory (105); Machiavel- 
lian theory (no) ; The up-to-date state (112). IV. The Fas- 
ciSTi IN Their State. The rush for the band-wagon (113) ; 
The Old Guard (i 14) ; Mussolinism (115); The Prime Minis- 
ter (116); The dark interior (116); Dissidence (117); The 
caseofMisuri ( 1 18) ; The National (119); Integralism 
and revisionism (121); The case of Rocca (122); Tinkering 
with the machine (124); Internal friction (124); The Mus- 
solini myth (125); The crisis (126); Penitence (126); In- 
transigence (127); The new intransigence (128); The new 
Constitution of the Party (129); The Party turns school- 
master (131); Doubts (131); Educational rotation of offices 
(132); The irreconcilables reconciled (133); More giovinezza 
(133^ The Militia (134). 


Chapter IV 

SYNDICALISM AND THE CORPORATE STATE 

I. The Convergence of Syndicalism and Nationalism. The 
syndicalist revolt against bourgeois socialism (139); Revo- 
lutionary wars (140); The growth of national syndicates 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

(142); Syndicalistic nationalists: d’Annunzio (145); Fascism 
the synthesis (146). 11 . The Reconstruction of Syn- 

dicalist Theories. The discovery of new origins (148); A 
suitable metaphysics (151); Nations and classes: proletarian 
Italy (152); Class struggles (154); Proletarian aristocracy 
(156); Citizens versus producers (158); Syndical society 
and the sovereign state (160); Gruppi di competenza (162); 
Other groups (163). III. The Crisis. Towards syndicate 
monopoly (165); The Party and the Corporations (166); 
De StefanI’s liberalism (167); The Right Wing (169); The 
agriculturalists balk (170); The industrialists force a com- 
promise (171); Labor retaliates (172). IV. Reform. The 
Reform Commission (174); The Pact of the Vidoni Palace 
(177)1 The new Constitution (178). V. The Corporate 
State. Interpreting the Constitution (190) ; New Rules and 
Regulations (191); The Ministry of Corporations (193); 
The Magna Charta of Labor (196); Syndicalism versus Cor- 
porationism (200); Economic representation (201); Syn- 
dical democracy or fascism (203); The strong state (207); 
Some socialists explain (212). 


Chapter V 


FASCIST CULTURE \ . . . 215 

I. Fascism and Culture. II. Fascist Religion. The Catholic 
Italian people (216) ; The bourgeois Italian state (217) ; The 
Catholic invasion of the state (217); The fascist attack 
(217); Fascist repentance (218); New friends in an old 
harmony (218); Fascist spiritual ambitions (220); The 
Catholic state (221); Religious education (221); Fascist 
rites and ritual (222); Rival suitors of youth (223)* Saint 
Francis and Mussolini (224); Fascist religion in the making 
(226) ; Saint Benito (227) ; Fascist myth (228). III. Fascist 
Intellect. Anti-philosophy (230) ; The old intellectualism 
(231); Signs of revolt (231); Futurist revolt (232); The 
revolt of youth (234); Educational reform (235); Journalist 
intellect (237); Suckert (238); Volt (Count Vincenzo Fani) 
(239); Rocca (239); Pellizzi (240); And others (241). 

IV. Fascist Art, Futurism (242); Vocism (243); D’Annun- 
zio (244) ; Discouraged artists (245) ; Mussolini comes out for 
art (24s); Fascist works of art (246). V. Fascist Morals. 

The supposed unity of fascist culture (247); Fascist char- 
acter (248); Sport (248); The well-ordered life (249); 
Giovinezza (250) ; Aristocracy (251) ; The heroic breed (252). 



X 


TABLE OF CONTENTS 


APPENDIX 

SELECTIONS FROM FASCIST LITERATURE AND 
DOCUMENTS OF FASCIST HISTORY 

Part I 

Thp War Party, i. Mussolini makes a start (Mussolini) (257) ; 
2. “Long Live War!” (Soffici) (259); 3- “Futurism and 
Fascism” (Marinetti) (260). 

Part II 

International Relations and the New Roman Empire. 4. 
Mussolini on Imperialism (Mussolini) (273); 5. Mussolini 
on Internationalism (Mussolini) (274) ; 6. Strife is the 
origin of all things^’ (Mussolini) (276); 7. ^^The greatest 
humiliation” (Soffici) (276); 8. ''A notable service” (Sof- 
fici) (277); 9. On disarmament (Coppola) (277); 10. Amer- 
ican Imperialism (Forges-Davanzati) (278); ii. Life is 
becoming harder (Gayda) (280) ; 12. The New Empire 
(Carli) (281). 


Part III 

Fascist Revolution and Government. 13. From the Memoirs 
of a Squadrist (Banchelli) (288); 14. Fascist Individualism 
(De StefanI) (298); 15. The Proclamation of the Quadrum- 
virate (302) ; 16. Mussolini introduces himself to Parliament 
(Mussolini) (302); 17. The Moral Revolt” (Misuri) 
(305); 18- Election Incidents (308); 19. Confessions of a 
scapegoat (Rossi) (310); 20. Intransigent Fascism (Fari- 
nacci) (313); 21. The new constitution of the Fascist Party 

(317)* 

Part IV 

Fascist Syndicalism and the Corporate State. 22. The judg- 
ment of the “ Solons ” (321); 23. The transformation of 
the State” (Rocco) (327); 24. The Labor Charter (332); 
25. Loyal industrialists (Benni) (336); 26. Syndicalism 
versus Corporationism {Critica Fascista) (338). 


Part V 

Fascist Theory and Culture. 27. Force and Consent ” (Mus- 
solini) (341); 28. Liberty and Liberalism (Corradini) (343); 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 


XI 


29. Gentile’s version of Fascism (Gentile) (344); 30. Fas- 
cism as a Counter-Reformation and Anti-Risorgimento 
(Suckert) (353); 31. “Fascist Thought” (Pellizzi) (357); 
32. The Duce on art (Mussolini) (358) ; 33. Waiting for Fas- 
cist art (Soffici) (358); 34. Fascist futurist art (Marinetti) 
(360); 35. On fascist art {Critica Fascista) (362). 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 3^5 

INDEX 387 




CHAPTER I 


WAR AND EMPIRE 
L Interventionism 

Depretis used to say, When I see a foreign policy cloud arising on 
the European horizon, I open my umbrella and wait until it passes.” 
This might well be taken as the motto of Italian foreign policy between 
Cavour and Crispi. If Gladstone thought it reasonable to adopt a 
little England ” policy, it would seem almost axiomatic that the new- 
born Italian state must adopt a policy of little Italy.” Cavour, who 
had played the diplomatic game to the limit, had found it exceedingly 
difficult and treacherous, and his ultimate success might well be at- 
tributed to his good fortune rather than to his power. The New Italy 
seemed to be launched into a sea of enemies. Austria was of course an 
enemy, but so also was France, which has frustrated the early hopes of 
Italian unity and had kept a garrison in Civitavecchia from 1850 to 
1870. The pioneer Italian socialist, Pisacane, who was at the same 
time a soldier of the Risorgimento, had taught the doctrine that Italy 
must face not only her open enemy, Austria, but also France, and in a 
measure England, ^^who deserve our contempt as well as our hatred 
since they are our enemies only in secret.”^ Certainly after 1870 and 
during the rule of Bismarck the European waters looked less favorable 
than ever for any ambitious Italian statesman who might venture to 
fish in them. 

Depretis took this for granted; Crispi learned it by bitter experience. 
For Crispi, who might be called an Italian Disraeli and whom the 
fascisti now regard as their direct predecessor, was the first statesman of 
the New Italy to conceive his country as a world power. Hitherto 
Italian nationalists had dreamed of no higher bliss than seeing Italy a 
national state, that is, seeing all of Italia irredenta united to the Italian 
state. And this was no mean ambition, for Italia irredenta was a large 
territory. But Crispi, probably more from despair for irredentism 
than from faith in a new imperialism, decided that Italy^s expansion 
must take other forms. Following up the success of his internal anti- 

^ Quoted in Michels: ^acziallsmus und Faszismus. Vol. II, pp. 30—31. 



2 NATIONALISM OR IMPERIALISM 

clerical policy, and floating on the wave of anti-French sentiment, he 
spread the doctrine that France and not Austria was Italy’s greater 
enemy, that Italy’s manifest destiny lay not so much in the Adriatic as 
in the Mediterranean, and that instead of a policy of political expansion 
to the territories on the northeast, Italy must undertake an economic 
expansion to the southeast of the Mediterranean; Italy must become 
an economic imperial power before it could be a unified national state. 
In pursuance of this policy he put a damper on Irredentism; then he 
approached Bismarck, who sent him to Vienna to make peace there, 
after which the Triple Alliance was concluded. German capital began 
to pour into Italy and the combination of German capital and Italian 
labor gave industry and commerce a fresh impulse and a prosperity 
which paved the way for “ economic expansion.” The actual industrial 
development of Italy was, of course, accomplished by financiers and 
industrialists, both German and Italian, more than by politicians ; and 
it was from these economic leaders that the slogan of Italy’s “ sacred 
egoism ” and the economic Interpretation of Italy’s policy first came — 
a doctrine which later became the gospel of Italian politicians. 

Bitter regrets now began to be heard that Depretis had failed to take 
Tunis when he might have had it easily. Now that this was impossible, 
France having taken advantage of Italy’s renunciation, Italy should 
seize Tripoli immediately before it was too late. Crispi therefore set 
out in 1882 to gain Tripoli, but Instead of adopting the fairly easy route 
from Egypt into Tripoli, which would have been possible had he co- 
operated with England, he undertook a more ambitious plan of start- 
ing at the Red Sea, going around Egypt and thence into Tripoli, thus 
laying the foundations of a vast colonial territory from Arabia to Tunis. 
Assab was besieged in 1882, Massaua in 1885 the expedition 
dragged on until the disaster at Adua in 1896, which led immediately to 
Crispi’s fall and to the abandonment of his whole foreign policy. Italy 
was also forced to sign a humiliating treaty with respect to Tunis, the 
result of which was to prevent the Italian majority in Tunis from build- 
ing adequate Italian schools and to subject them to the French language 
and culture, as well as to French economic domination. Then came 
England’s growing opposition to Germany and finally the Triple En- 
tente. This upset Italy’s position completely, and she was forced to 
follow the confused policy of alliance with the central powers and 
friendship with the others.” 

Such a policy was but a symptom of the fundamental dilemma which 
Italy’s ambitions were compelled to face; a nationalistic expansion of 
its boundaries meant conflict with Austria, an imperialistic expansion in 
the Mediterranean meant conflict with France and England. One or 



THE NEW ITALY 


3 

the other of these ambitions would have to be sacrificed, but Italy 
would renounce neither and hence she could do nothing but fall back 
on Depretis’ umbrella. 

It was Germany and Austria who finally helped her out of the 
dilemma, for by their new Balkan and Eastern policy and by their 
friendship with Turkey, they made themselves more serious obstacles 
to Italy ^s ambitions in the eastern Mediterranean than were France 
and England. The latter powers immediately took advantage of the 
changed conditions and cultivated Italy^s friendship ” by patching 
up their differences. As early as 1903 Austria began to protest against 
this growing friendship, and in the following years Italy^s adherence to 
the Triple Alliance became more and more formal and perfunctory, 
until the Lybian War of 1911 made it perfectly clear that the dilemma 
was broken and that both in its nationalistic and in its imperialistic aims 
Italy^s chief enemy was Austria. 

Along with this cla!rification of foreign policy the Lybian War brought 
with it, as perhaps its chief result for the Italian people, a renewed con- 
fidence in Italy’s power and independence. For the mere fact that Italy 
had been able to fight its own war for its own ends, instead of being 
forced beggarly to pick its way through the intricacies of the policies and 
alliances of other states, impressed the Italians as the first real evidence 
of their national liberty and as the beginning of their career as a world 
power. 

The elder statesmen, to be sure, were still conscious of Italy’s weakness. 
Giolitti had prepared the diplomatic ground with extraordinary cau- 
tion, and had undertaken the war not so much because he was enthusi- 
astic about it as because he needed it to strengthen his internal political 
position. He and his colleagues evidently sighed with relief when it 
was all happily over. 

But this older generation, with its nineteenth century background of 
discouraging experience, was now confronted by a younger generation, 
the New Italy, as it styled itself, full of confidence, exuberant and burst- 
ing with national pride and patriotic sentiment. The Lybian War of 
1911 was to some extent a result of the rise of this generation, but to a 
much greater extent was its cause. Nationalistic doctrine had been 
developing of course ever since MazzinI, but in 1910 the Nationalistic 
Association was formed by a small group of intellectuals and their 
young disciples, and after 19 ii their movement grew enormously. 
Enrico Corradini’s newspaper, the Idea Nazionale (now combined with 
the Tribuna) ^ became a popular and powerful organ of public opinion 
for the younger generation. In 1913 the Nationalist Association was 
transformed into a political party, which at its first elections sent six 



4 PHILOSOPHY OF THE NATIONALISTS 

deputies to Parliament. This comparatively meager strength of the 
Nationalist Party is, however, no adequate measure of the growth ol 
national sentiment in the country. For in all the parties, notably among 
the Syndicalists and Republicans, the military spirit carried large groups 
away with it. Even the Socialists, by their very benevolent neutrality, 
had lent passive but none the less impressive support to the war. Cer- 
tainly among the younger generation in the non-socialist parties the 
Tripoli War fanned nationalism into a flame. Heretofore there had been 
little organized propaganda either for or against nationalism, but now 
it became a vital political issue. 

The more significant forms of nationalism, however, went beyond 
party politics and became a cultural heritage of the new generation. 
The already influential society, Dante Alighieri^ doubled its membership 
between 1905 and 1914, and became the chief organ of irredentism and 
an almost official guardian for all Italians living beyond the confines of 
Italy. Soon another irredentist society, the Pro Trento e Trieste, was 
founded to carry on the propaganda for northern Italia irredenta. The 
geographer Ettore Tolomei developed the theory of the italianitd’ of 
the south Tyrol, and other Italian scientists came to his support with the 
discovery of Italy^s natural ” frontiers, which, it happened, were con- 
siderably beyond the language boundaries. These conceptions soon 
became the common property not merely of the intellectuals, but, by 
means of school texts, maps, and travelling guides, of the Italian public 
at large. 

A whole philosophy of nationalism was also developed at this time, 
which, though it then represented little more than the journalism and 
propaganda of leaders like Corradini, has since then been taken ovei 
bodily by the fascisti, and recognized as a serious and integral part of 
their political theory. The general ideas which underlay the nationalism 
of practically all European states in the nineteenth century need not be 
rehearsed here. The outlines of the Italian nationalists’ theory were 
taken over bodily from Maurras and the Action Frangaise, and thus in- 
directly from De Maistre and De Bonald; but there are certain special 
characteristics of the Italian version which are fundamental to an 
understanding of fascism. 

First and foremost is the theory of the disparity between national 
potentialities and the pre-war government of Italy. At its beginnings 
the nationalist party was in a sense revolutionary, in that it was frankly 
opposed to the existing parliamentary regime. According to it the 
national characteristics of the Italian people, not of its government, are 
as a matter of fact those of a rejuvenated rising people. The population 
is growing by a vigorous birth-rate, spreading with enormous rapidity 



PHILOSOPHY OF THE NATIONALISTS 5 

over ever new areas, penetrating into the German regions in the north, 
and Into France on the west, dotting practically the whole Mediter- 
ranean coast with Italian cities, colonies or settlements, and emigrating 
to the Americas by the million. This process is called by the nation- 
alists the imperialism of the poor.” In practically all parts of the 
world, by the productive labor of this growing people new areas are be- 
ing opened up, railroads built, deserts irrigated, coal and iron mined. 
The Mediterranean basin especially is being developed by Italians. 
Nor has this creative energy of Italians today merely an economic form. 
Wherever they go they feel themselves part of the Italian people, 
representatives of its traditions and culture, members of a single nation. 
This sentiment of unity, this unwillingness to be individually inde- 
pendent, this consciousness of the higher value and ultimate indivisi- 
bility of the national whole, is, they say, a common fact. 'But of this 
fact the pre-war Italian state and its government took no notice; instead 
it represented just the opposite. It was old and weak, .subservient to 
other states, and incapable of expansion. Internally it was divided 
into rival claHes and'paftiesTffid externally it failed to unite politically 
the masses of Italians who had been forced beyond its narrow confines. 
Based on individual rights and independence, it claimed to be but the 
servant of its Individual citizens, not the organic embodiment of a 
national unity. In this situation the state had to give way. No 
political government can resist the primary social forces by which 
national life Is ruled. The governing class, which was but a vestige of 
an antiquated past and no longer really ruled, had to give place to a 
fresh classe dirigente, who share the new expansive energies of the 
people and who can bring the Italian state into harmony with Italian 
national life. 

Above all, the nationalists have taught the primary duty of disciplin- 
ing the nation for the struggle with other nations. Foreign policy must 
have the first place, and it must be frankly imperialistic and expansive 
as is the Italian nation. Italy must be taught to expect international 
competition in normal times and war in times of crisis. In order to make 
the devotion of the people to the people spontaneous and whole-hearted, 
the cult of the nation must become a veritable religion, a myth, in the 
Sorelllan sense. ^‘Nothing for the Individual, all for Italy” must 
be the motto. 

In practice, of course, the nationalists were not, as their theory pre- 
tended, the embodiment of the nation. As Corradini put it, they were 
representative of the nation only in the sense that they represented the 
true interests of the nation! They were little more than a handful of 
young intellectuals, students and journalists, whose patriotic pride and 



6 OPPOSITION TO IMPERIALISIVI 

youthful enthusiasm were usually exploited by the calcu|latmg agents 
of financial and industrial interests. Their own recognition of their 
kinship to the Liberal (i.e., the conservative) party testiaes to this, as 
does also their career after the World War. Neyerthek ss they them- 
selves were conservatives neither in theory nor in spiri - ey were 
fighters who had transferred their pugnacity from the class-struggle, 
with which most Italians of the last generation or two usd been pre- 
occupied, to the struggle between nations. War appeared to them a 
more hopeful means of saving the Italian proletariat than the class- 
struggle by which the socialists were keeping the country in internal 
turmoil and perpetual poverty. 

It was with this temper and under the stimulation of these ideas that 
the younger generation of Italian politicians faced the )^orld War. 
Many had already been converted by the Tripoli War in 1911. But 
not all were converted so easily. For example, among those socialists 
who refused to be side-tracked from the class struggle by a inerely 
imperialistic war, was a young journalist named Benito IVIussolini. He 
was at the time editing “The Class Struggle ” at Forli in Romagna. 
When the Tripoli War broke out, he successfully organized a general 
strike of protest against the war, for which he spent several months in 
jail. In defending his anti-war speech before the court he said: 

Between us Socialists and the Nationalists, there is this difference of 
view: they want a vast Italy, what I want is an Italy well cultivated, rich 
and free. I would rather be a citizen of Denmark than a subject of 
the Chinese Emperor. I took my stand then on love of country. I may 
have been a little incoherent in my remarks, for I have been accused 
of having shown a weakness for nationalism. If I had wished to take 
a strictly internationalist and revolutionary line I should, in reflecting 
on the Lybian Expedition, have rejoiced after the fashion of the 
Christian over the decadance of the Roman Empire: ‘What matters it 
to me that the Empire is falling into ruins, as upon these ruins will 
rise the Cross of Christ? ’ I should have gone on to say: ‘ And if oflficial 
Italy is going to embark upon a venture which will cost her blood and 
treasure she will be the less able to offer resistance to the dissemination 
of our ideas and to the blows dealt her by the revolution.’ But, because 
I am an Italian and love the land in which I was born and whose 
language I speak, therefore in my capacity as a good Italian citizen I 
expressed, on the basis of economic and geographical facts, my opinion 
that this enterprise was calculated to injure gravely the interests of 
the nation, with which are bound up indissolubly the interests of the 
proletariat. I have written and said what I have written and said 
because the Italy I want to see, the Italy I would love, is one which 
would strive to fulfil the duty which now at last is recognized: 



INTERVENTIONISTS 


7 

duty of freeing her children from economic and moral impoverishment. 

. . . I say to you, Gentlemen of the Tribunal, that if you acquit me 
you will do me a kindness, because you will restore me to my work and 
to society. But if you condemn me you will do me an honor because 
you find yourselves in the presence not of a malefactor, but of an asserter 
of ideas, of an agitator for conscience’ sake, of a soldier of a creed which 
calls for your respect in that it bears within itself the visions of the 
future and the great strength of the truth.” ^ 

However, such irreconcilable hostility on the part of revolutionary so- 
cialists was characteristic of only a small minority; the reformist so- 
cialist majority half-heartedly supported the government during 
the war. 

The case of Mussolini is nevertheless typical in one sense, for though 
he was still opposed to imperialism, he had for some years espoused 
nationalism. Though a nationalist, he was not an “ Africanist,” as the 
imperialists were contemptuously called. Before he came to Forli 
he had been active in Italian propaganda in the Trentino and had 
even been associated with Cesare Battisti in the editorship of an irre- 
dentist journal in that region. Hence, when war broke out between 
Austria and Serbia in July 1914, his attitude was quite different from 
what it had been toward the war of 1911. As editor of the radical 
socialist paper, the Avanti, and one of the spokesmen of the party, 
he immediately denounced the Triple Alliance and came out for 

absolute neutrality.” This stand pleased everyone, the national- 
ists because they saw it as a blow to Austria, the orthodox socialists 
because they interpreted it as an instance of proletarian hostility 
to war. 

Meanwhile among the non-socialist parties interventionism was grow- 
ing rapidly. In Florence, Genoa, and other northern centers of pa- 
triotic sentiment, influential groups were openly in favor of war. 
Among these the writers represented by the Voce of Florence were 
important. They were a group of young intellectual adventurers, 
Prezzolini, Papini, etc., militant idealists ” eager for almost anything 
new, and fired by the idealistic philosophy of Gentile as well as by a 
sincere and spontaneous patriotism. ® 

® Quoted from Margherita G, Sarfatti: Benito Mussolini, pp. 174—5. 

^ A typical idealistic war argument may be found in the Voce of April aS, 1914, 
where Prezzolini, on the occasion of Wilson’s war on Mexico in the interests of 
international peace, wrote an article on World Cooperation ” in which he devel- 
oped the thesis that internationalism is possible only by means of war. The article 
closes as follows : One is always right in opposing this or that war in its particular 
forms with such and such results. To justify war, one must rise to the consideration 
of war as a form of the world’s activity.” 



8 


MUSSOLINI BOLTS 

Numerous groups (fasci) of interventionists began to form till over 
the country. Within a few months a Garibaldi Brigade had vqljinteered 
for the Argonne front, including Corrldoni and a number of "fiis patriotic 
syndicalist followers. 

A more boisterous form of interventionism came from the futurists. 
In September 1914 Marinetti and several others were arrested for 
burning Austrian flags in the piazza at Milan and for pro-war demon- 
strations during the battle of the Marne. No sooner out of jail than 
Marinetti continued preaching war as the world’s only hygiene. He 
addressed a crowd of students as follows: We . . . futurists have al- 
ways considered war as the only inspiration of art, the only moral 
purifier, the only leaven for the human mass. Only war can rejuvenate, 
accelerate, stimulate human intelligence, give relief and airing to the 
nerves, free us from our daily burdens, give a thousand flavors to life 
and a little genius to imbeciles. War is the only measure of altitude for 
the new aeroplane life which we are preparing. War, intensified ^futur- 
ism, will never kill war, as the passe-i%ts hope, but will kill passe-ism* 
War is the culminating and perfect synthesis of progress (aggressive 
velocity plus violent simplification of efforts towards well-being). War 
is a lightning stroke of courage, energy and intelligence falling on every- 
one. A compulsory school of ambition and heroism; fulness of life 
and complete freedom in surrender to one’s country. 

“ For a poor and prolific nation war is a business proposition; to pur- 
chase the needed land by the over-supply of blood. . . . The war will 
exhaust all the Country’s enemies; diplomats, professors, philosophers, 
archeologists, critics, cultural obsessions, greek, latin, history, senility, 
museums, libraries, tourist Industry. The war will develop gymnas- 
tics, sport, schools of practical agriculture, commerce and Industry. The 
war will rejuvenate Italy, will enrich it with men of action, will force 
it to live no longer on its past, Its ruins, and its gentle climate but "on 
its own national forces,” ^ 

Such interventionism, however, did not represent large groups. The 
attitude of the socialist masses was much more important, and much 
more uncertain. The government at the time could not venture a war 
without socialist support, and hence Mussolini’s stand was awaited 
eagerly and was critical if not nationally decisive. Up until the middle 
of September he seemed to cling to his absolute neutrality formula, but 
even before then his casual remarks expressed his sympathy for the 
Entente and by the middle of October he had definitely slid into the 
interventionist camp. His conversion came out only indirectly at first. 

^ Marinetti: Futunsmo e fascismoy pp. 9^7. Also compare the war chart in- 
serted between these pages. See also Appendix No. 3. 



MUSSOLINI BOLTS 


9 

It began by putting his neutrality into the form of a demand for an 
official outspoken denunciation of the Triple Alliance on the part of the 
Government. Then, being an ardent admirer of the violent French 
socialist, Blanqui, he defended Blanquism against the German 
Marx. He transformed the attacks made by Turati and Treves against 
the German military machine into ringing denunciations of the “ Teu- 
tonic order.” Several of his personal friends had become interven- 
tionists, notably Corridoni, and to these Mussolini had expressed his 
personal judgment in favor of war with Austria. Soon the pacifism in 
his public writing became more and more dubious. 

During October, in his paper, Avanti, he engaged in polemics with 
the Giornale Italia and the Resto del Carlino (liberal papers), which 
made his position still more equivocal. Prezzolini commented on them 
as follows : “ I believe Mussolini is sincere but his position is not clear 
and there is a conflict in him between his own determined and superior 
nature and his socialistic attachments, his sacrifice to his party. Never- 
theless the polemic has been useful in that it has forced Mussolini to 
confess his sympathy for a war against Austria and has freed the gov- 
ernment from any fear of the attitude of the Socialist Party in case 
of action.” ® 

Mussolini was immediately called before the Grand Council of the 
Party at Bologna to give an account of himself, and after an editorial 
In the Avanti against the pacifistic pec ore belanti^ he was asked to re- 
sign from the paper. The Milan section of the Party met to recom- 
mend his expulsion from the Party and gave him an opportunity to 
defend himself. He accepted the challenge. In the face of the whistling 
and hissing which greeted him, he pounded on the table, swore a round 
provincial oath and shaking his forefinger at his accusers said: “You 
hate me because you still love me. . . . You are going to strike at me 
tonight with ostracism and with banishment from the public squares 
and streets of Italy. Very well; I solemnly wager that I shall continue 
to speak, and that in a few years the masses of Italy will follow and 
applaud me, when you will no longer speak nor have a following.” • 
And at his formal expulsion from the Party, November 25, 1914, he 
said: “ I tell you from this moment on I shall have no remorse nor pity 
for those who in this tragic hour do not speak out their minds for fear 
of hisses and cat-calls. I shall have no remorse nor pity for such vile 
wretches. And you will see me once more at your side. Do not be- 
lieve that the bourgeoisie is enthusiastic about our interventionism. It 
Is grumbling, accusing us of rashness and evidently fears that the 

® La Voccy October 13, 1914. 

® Domenico Russo; Mussolini et le Fascismsy p. So. 



lo IL POPOLO D’lTALIA 

proletariat once armed with the bayonet will be able to use it for its own 
ends. Do not imagine that by tearing up my membership card m the 
Socialist Party you can forbid my socialist faith or prevent me 
continuing to work for the cause of socialism and of the revolution. 

For Mussolini the issue was an intimately personal one; it was a con- 
flict between his temperament and his philosophy. It was physically 
impossible for a man who had been picking fights for years, and who was 
habitually devoted to continuous conflict, to preach neutrality when at 
last a real fight actually presented itself. For months he had supported 
Battisti at Trent in a journalistic attack on Austria. How could he 
now be passive while Battisti was on the way to martyrdom? As the 
above c^uoted passage shows, he could not honestly conceal his desire to 
be in the fray, and he naturally concluded that other socialists were 
pacifists insincerely or out of fear. In fact his momentary neutrality 
meant to him personally rather an energetic opposition to the govern- 
ment in case it should join Germany and Austria. He was an Italian 
fighter by nature and a socialist by circumstance. For in time of peace 
socialism offered the only opportunity to wage war. Of course, he was a 
fighter politically and intellectually, not physically. (He seems to have 
had little physical courage or military enthusiasm,® and had left Italy 
apparently to avoid military service.) As early as 1912 Sorel is^ sup- 
posed to have said of him; “Our Mussolini is no ordinary socialist. 
You may expect to see him some day saluting the Italian flag, sword 
in hand at the head of some Holy Brigade. He is an Italian of the fif- 
teenth century, a condottiero.” ^ 

It was therefore merely a matter of time until he should find the 
proper ideas to justify his temperamental preferences. 

In II Popolo d’ltdia, his newspaper, which appeared three weeks 
after his expulsion, there was ample opportunity to expound and de- 
velop a pro-war philosophy. Mussolini’s ideas were not notable for 
inner unity, which fact in itself would indicate that they were trumped 
up ex post facto. Nevertheless it was during these months of recon- 
struction of his philosophy on the basis of his own personal experience 
that he formulated those ideas which later came to be characteristic of 
fascism. The new journal was headed “ II Popolo d’ltalia, a Socialist 
Daily.” In the upper left-hand corner was a quotation from Blanqui: 
“He who has steel, has bread,” and in the right-hand corner, from 
Napoleon: “The revolution is an idea that has found bayonets.” Mus- 

^ Benito Mussolini: Discord. First edition, p. 17. 

® C£. Angelica Balabanoff in La France de Nice et du Sad-Est, February ay, 
tgxy, p. 6 . 

• Cipriano Giachetti: Fascismo Liberator e, p. 87. 



IL POPOLO D’ITJLIA 


II 


solini’s first editorial was headed “ Audacity and it closed with this 
appeal: “To you, youths of Italy, youths from offices and classrooms, 
young in years and young in spirit, you who belong to the generation 
to whom fate has allotted the making of history, it is to you that I direct 
my cry of greeting, in the assurance that among your ranks it will find 
a loud echo and abundant sympathy. The cry is a word which I would 
never have uttered In normal times but which today I raise loud and 
clear, without dissimulation, with a sure faith — a fearful and fascinat- 
ing word — War ! ” 

Among the prominent contributors to the early numbers appear 
Alceste De Ambris, Di Staso, Agostino Lanzillo, Longobardi, Giovanni 
Papini, Giuseppe Prezzolini, Sergio Panunzio, Arturo Rossato and 
Salvemini. These authors directed their fire against various anti- 
interventionists, for various motives and from various points of view, but 
Mussolini tried to unify them all into a joint attack on a single external 
enemy, Austria, and on a triple internal one, viz., “ the bourgeoisie, the 
priests, and the socialist party.” Especially the pacifistic “ priests and 
politicians,” “ the eunuchs of the spirit,” were assailed. It was suggested 
that the bourgeoisie should pay for the war by heavy inheritance taxes. 
Papini called the “ Germans of the Banca Commerciale ” the “ real 
bosses of Italy ” against whom the revolution must be directed pri- 
marily, The same writer then sailed into the Pope^s powerless peace 
encyclical, abusing priests in general and urging the King to do some- 
thing practical for the war. By several writers, including Mussolini, 
the King was threatened: “Either the risk of war or the risk of the 
crown!” Prezzolini blamed Giolittl and the parliamentary bureau- 
cracy for its disgraceful dallying and dilatory tactics. In short, by one 
author or another every conceivable kind of appeal was made to push 
Italy into the war. 

The arguments which were emphasized by Mussolini personally 
were: 

(1) Italy will sooner or later be forced into the war anyway, It is 
therefore both more honorable and more profitable for Italy to will the 
war, to enter it freely, immediately and for her own interests. No 
further motive or cause is necessary. 

(2) Salandra’s policy of “ sacred egoism,” of bargaining with both 
sides to see who would promise Italy the most for her neutrality, is both 
disgraceful and useless. Italy must fight, must make sacrifices, if she 
expects to gain anything by the war. Italy will be isolated and despised 
after the war if she stands .aloof now. 

(3) All the other national proletariats are fighting, hence the princi- 

See Appendix No. i. 



12 IL POPOLO D’lTALIA 

pie of proletarian solidarity demands that the Italian proletariat should 
do likewise. Moreover “ war and socialism are incompatible only when 
taken in the universal meanings of the terms, but every age and every 
people has its wars. Life is relative; the absolute does not exist save as 
a cold and barren abstraction. He who cares too much for his own 
skin will not go to fight in the trenches, but neither will you find him^ on 
that day of battling in the streets. ... We must act, do something, 
fight and if needs be die. Neutrals have never dominated events; they 
have always submitted to them. It is blood that gives motion to the 
clanging wheels of history.” 

(4) For Italy the war must be a revolutionary war. The people must 
arm Itself and overthrow first foreign oppression and then its internal 
autocratic masters. “ For .us socialists the aims of the war are higher 
and more far— reaching 1 the war to weaken Austria and to humiliate 
Germany, the war which is to free Italy from servitude to the Triple 
Alliance, must necessarily create an atmosphere more propitious to the 
realization of the demands of the working class.”*^^ ‘ Today it is war, 
tomorrow it will be the revolution.” 

(5) Italy must fight a national war as a necessary preliminary to an 
international order, “ for there will never be an international order until 
the people have reached their national boundaries.”^* 

Such ideas were evidently those of a socialist, intended to convert 
fellow socialists. But the group which now gathered around Mussolini 
did not come from the rank and file of the Party, for to the socialist 
politicians and their followers Mussolini was anathema. They branded 
him as sold to the bourgeoisie. The fact that he was practically penni- 
less when he left the Avanti coupled with the appearance after only a 
few weeks of his own full-sized daily paper, contributed to by a number 
of very competent writers, gave a certain plausibility to this charge in 
its most literal meaning, and led to a bitter polemic. As a result II 
Popolo d’ltalia assumed a violent anti-socialist-party character right at 
the start and it became practically impossible for Mussolini to make his 
paper merely a “ parallel ” to the Avanti, as had been his original in- 
tention.*® Although the paper carried the “ Socialist Daily ” caption 
until 1919, and although Mussolini continued to call himself a socialist, 
he was soon aware that he could hope for no following among bona fide 
socialists, and he began to look about for support wherever he could 

** Speech at Parma, December 13, 1914. First edition of Discorsi, pp. 30-31. 

Mussolini in Pofolo Italia^ December 27, 1914.. 

Mussolini in Pofolo d^Italia^ January 24^ 1915* Also in Diuturna^ p. 15. 

Mussolini speech at Parma, December i j, 1914. First edition of Discorsi, p. zS. 

V. X. Nanni; Bolsc^isfnQ s tin rfin— 



^^^^FASCI D^AZIONE RIV 0LU7A0N ARI A 13 

find It. On March 30, 1915, at Milan, he and his followers even went 
so far as to hold a joint interventionist convention with the Republi- 
cans, the arch-enemies of socialism in Romagna. In general It became 
^difficult for him to insist on the distinction between socialists and the 
socialist party and on January 8, 1915, on the occasion of the funeral 
•for Bruno Garibaldi, who had been killed in action, he cried: “ Your 
day has passed, 0 socialists of Italy; when our dead live, some of our 
living must die.” 

^ Mussolini’s supporters were therefore a mixed lot from the start, 
neither bourgeois nor proletarian. Many of them were, like himself, 
young men who were misfits in any of the old parties. They were mostly 
“ white collar ” men, young men from offices and universities who felt 
an inner urge, left-wing nationalists, futurists, individualistic idealists, 
militant labor leaders too “ subversive ” for the socialist party, etc. In 
some regions (for example Tuscany) they were mostly ardent patriots 
of the Garibaldi type. In others (as in Romagna) they were violent 
anarchists. In still others they were student groups. On the whole they 
jwere restless spirits, radicals and revolutionists, who were disgusted 
with the neutralist attitude both of official socialism and of the bour- 
Igeois parties, and who out of temperament as well as policy were anx- 
dous to join the other nations in war. Augusto Turati, now Secretary 
^General of the Fascist Party, In a letter to a friend written at the front 
in 1916, characterized them well when he wrote: I will not hide from 
you that I love war: we grew up with an unsatisfied longing for great- 
ness, a longing nourished by medieval duels, by Garlbaldine achieve- 
ment or rather by the revolutionary exploits of Garibaldi, by plumes 
and songs, and we found ourselves keeping accounts and scribbling 
for ten-cent magazines. We were malcontents then and shall be after 
the war; for the present I am at my post. I assure you modern war 
is not merry; nevertheless I like it.” 

Naturally enough these young men, eager for Italian participation in 
•the war, organized quite spontaneously and regardless of party into 
little bands (fasci) of patriots. Within the patriotic parties, of course, 
^this was natural and to be taken for granted. The groups of whom we 
‘‘are now speaking constituted merely the left wing of the interventionist 
^movement. The Milan fascioj of which Mussolini was the leader, 
was only one of a number of similar but largely independent 
jasci scattered throughout Italy. II Popolo d'ltalia naturally be- 
came the chief organ of publicity for such groups and it, even more 
than Mussolini personally, helped to give a semblance of form and 
unity. 

Augusto Turati: Ragioni I dealt di Vita Fascisfa, pp. 154—5. 



14 FASCI D’AZIONE RIF OLUZION ARIA 

On January 24, 1915, they held their first general convention at Milan. 
The list of speakers was: G. Vidali, M. Bianchi, T. Masotti, B. Mus- 
solini, F. Corridoni, M, Gibelli, O. Olivetti, Alceste De Ambris, A. 
Bottai, D. Papa, Madame Sorgue. They agreed to give their various 
groups a national organization and to call them Fas ci d^Azione rivo-- 
luzionaria,'' bands for revolutionary action. The word fas do was, 
of course, not their invention, being a common word, nor did they mean 
to give it any new or profound connotation. In the nineties there had 
been '' revolutionary fasd among the socialists of Sicily, a movement 
led by the deputy, Giuseppe De Felice Giuffrida, and since then the 
word had retained a certain vogue among revolutionists. Moreover it 
was politically a neutral term and this had its advantages for a move- 
ment that expressly sought to be non-political. 

Mussolini’s speech outlining what he thought ought to be Italy’s 
war aims and foreign policy is highly interesting, not so much because 
it was important at the time, as in view of what happened after the 
war. He admitted that the fasci could not threaten a revolution since 
they lacked the necessary power, but he claimed that the fasci could 
contribute toward creating a public opinion for the war so strong that 
if the government should refuse to make war, a revolution would re- 
sult. He discussed the simplest way of bringing about a casus belli, and 
then outlined Italy’s objectives in going to war. He explicitly de- 
nounced an irredentist war — such a war could be left to the Republi- 
cans and Nationalists. All he wanted was a war to unify the Italian 
nation. He argued for the Napoleonic boundary ” of Bolzano and 
Trieste not only on the ground that it marked the northern limit of 
the bi-lingual zone but also because it was strategically easily defensible. 
For the non-Italian population of Trieste he pleaded the widest pos- 
sible national liberty. The problem of Fiume and Dalmatia he thought 
wise to postpone altogether for later diplomatic agreements. A few 
days after this speech, in the Popolo d'ltalia, Prezzolini argued on eco- 
nomic grounds for annexing Fiume as well as Trieste; to which Mus- 
solini replied that he had no prejudices,” but that if Fiume is to be 
annexed it should be done for better reasons than economic. 

By his general pragmatic flexibility, by his policy of not having 

prejudices,” and by thus keeping constantly a middle ground, he suc- 
ceeded in gaining a personal leadership over the fasci and in organizing 
them into concerted action. By the end of February 1915 there were 
already 105 fasci with 9,000 members. Street demonstrations were the 
ordinary activity of these “ revolutionary ” bands, though occasionally 
acts of intimidation and violence were resorted to against the neutralist 
Published in Discorsi, first edition. 



WAR DISCIPLINE 


^5 

leaders. On April 12, at Rome, Mussolini, Marinetti, Settimelli and 
several others were arrested for interventionist demonstrations. After 
the declaration of war, in May, Mussolini devoted his paper and what 
little influence he had to subordinating all issues to those of a military 
victory. In the fall of 1915 he was drafted and served as corporal until 
the spring of 1917 when he was wounded by the explosion of a trench 
mortar. On being dismissed after recovery he returned to his paper. 
He was an unsparing critic of the politicians who both before and after 
the great defeat at Caporetto failed to support the military chiefs. 
And he was among the first of the journalists to herald the final failure 
of the Austrian offensive and their consequent retreat as the victory 
of Vittorio Veneto,” the achievement of the Italian army and the decisive 
battle of the war, by which Italy could claim really to have won 
the war. 


//. Down with Parliament 

The course of the war added at least two major themes to fascist 
ideology. One was the emphasis on military discipline as opposed to 
a parliamentary government and democratic liberty, the other was Im- 
perialism. Even before the declaration of war, the interventionists 
became impatient with the parliamentary tactics of delay and debate. 
On the eve of Italy’s entrance into the war Mussolini wrote an exas- 
perated editorial in the Popolo entitled “Down with Parliament,” in 
which he said: “ These deputies who should be at the head of the nation 
to give it strength and courage, instead of to depress and degrade It as 
they are doing — these deputies should be brought before a war tri- 
bunal. Discipline must begin at the top if it is to be respected lower 
down. As for me, I am ever more firmly convinced that for the welfare 
of Italy a dozen or so of deputies should be shot in the back, shot I say, 
and at least a couple of ex-ministers should be sent to jail. Not only 
this, but I believe with an ever profounder conviction that the Italian 
parliament is the noxious boil which poisons the blood of the nation. 
It should be extirpated,” 

During the war he became even more disgusted, if possible, and ex- 
tended his condemnation to democratic institutions and ideas in general. 
Especially after his own return from the front, it appeared ridiculous 
to him that the whole nation should not be mobilized for war, disciplined 
by a military hierarchy and willing to sacrifice its normal extrava- 
gances. Luxury, frivolity, leisure, liberty, everything that did not 
contribute to the “ moral discipline of the nation ” ought to be aban- 
doned without question. The whole nation must be militarized and 

Dmtumay pp. 4.9—50. 



i6 WAR DISCIPLINE 

must “assume the aspect of an arsenal.”^® From this point of view, 
which appeared to him obviously justified after the defeat of Caporetto 
and during the tense winter of 1917-18, the checks which parliament 
imposed on military authority, and the lengthy debates about civil 
liberties, free speech, rights of labor and similar problems, together with 
the whole traditional business of party bargaining for cabinet portfolios, 
impressed him as litde short of treason. On February 24, 
finally let loose as follows: “ In May 1915 we committed a grave error 
for which we have since atoned bitterly. We who willed the war, we 
should have seized the power. . . . They spoke of ‘ political liberty ! ’ 
Ah, liberty to betray, to assassinate our country, to make more blood 
flow. . . . This political liberty is paradoxical. It is criminal to think 
of drafting, clothing, arming and sending off to be killed one group of 
men, of denying these every liberty of word or protest, punishing ter- 
ribly any soldier who perpetrates the least act or word contrary to the 
established order, and at the same time, behind their backs, in secret 
convention, among groups of drunken brutish men and in the sacristies 
to permit the deliberation of deeds and the uttering of phrases which 
would kill the war. . . . The poor soldier in the trenches asks him- 
self: Why should I suffer and die, while at Rome they are still debating 
whether or not to make war? When at Rome those who should be 
directing the affairs of Italy are still in doubt whether it is right or 
wrong to wage war ! Gentlemen, I call this a deplorable and criminal 
crowd of academics. And now, even after Caporetto, even after the 
defeat, this crowd of irresponsibles is still permitted to obstruct the 
war.” “ We young men made a mistake at that time, a mistake for 
which we have paid dearly; we put thus our flaming youth into the hands 
of the most ruinous old age. When I say ‘ old,’ I do not mean in point 
of time. I think some people are born old. I speak of those aged per- 
sons, who are antiquated and outworn, who are but incumbrances. 
They have not understood, they have not realized a single fundamental 
fact of the war. It is the people . . . who have grasped the meaning 
of this war, and two other classes of persons too — the poets and the 
industrialists. ... To these two classes should be added also the 
journalists, who are sufficiently poetical not to be industrialists and 
sufficiently industrial not to be poets.” *'■ 

*-® V. DisdfUm di Guerra, November 9, 1917. In Diutuma, pp. 1+7-150. 

Discord, first edition, pp. 33-39 fassim. 

Discorsi, first edition, p. 46. 



THE GREAT HUMILIATION 


17 


IIL Imperial Rome 

This picture of a nation morally unified and disciplined for combat, 
an idea which was natural enough in the face of military defeat, was 
revived by the fascisti after the war and under circumstances which we 
shall describe later. For the present we must return to a second concept 
which was developed during the war — imperialism. As we have al- 
ready noted, Mussolini was violently opposed to the imperialism of the 
Tripoli War and was at least very indifferent to the Imperialistic aims of 
the nationalists at the outset of the World War. But as the war went on, 
he and his revolutionary fasci were gradually by almost imperceptible 
stages converted to an imperialism of the most extreme type. 

One of Mussolini’s first expressions in this direction is to be found in 
an editorial of August 16, 1915, which he wrote on the occasion of 
‘Greece’s maneuvers for entering the war on the side of the Allies. He 
frankly opposed Greece’s bid and recommended that in order to humili- 
ate her and her pan-hellenism, the penalty of neutrality be inflicted on 
her. The world can be saved without Greece, he said, and moreover 
Greece would not be essential to the ^^new Balkan constellation.” 
Greece should be considered a moral ” enemy of Italy. The article 
closes as follows : “ Italy can not and must not remain aloof from the 
eastern Mediterranean which is destined to be our field of expansion 
tomorrow.” 

The ensuing hardships and struggles of the war, which proved to be 
greater than had been anticipated, naturally encouraged the idea that 
after the victory Italy would be entitled to all she might want. Cer- 
tainly the interventionists, Mussolini among them, would have been 
the last to suggest limits to Italy’s ambitions. When the Austrian of- 
fensive finally broke in June 1918 and the Italians were able to pursue 
their enemy across the Piave, and when peace-talk ” began immedi- 
ately afterwards, patriotic Italians were quick to sense their glory. 
Mussolini consciously cultivated a feeling of national pride, and ex- 
pounded what has been called "'the heroic lie that saved Italy,” 
namely, that the Italians had won a positive strategic victory at Vittorio 
Veneto and that this victory had really won the war for the Allies. 
Nothing, therefore, could be too good for heroic Italy ! In this spirit 
of pride over the victory and in the confidence that Italy had attained 
her objectives, the peace conference was awaited. 

Then there came unexpectedly, out of a clear blue, the great dis- 
illusionment, or as the nationalists called it, "the great humiliation of 

22 Diutitrna^ p. 65. v. Banchelli in Appendix No. 13. 



x8 THE GREAT HUMILIATION 

Versailles/’ Italian achievements were discounted, Italian imperialism 
was denounced, culminating in Wilson’s obstinate opposition to the 
secret treaties and in the diplomatic embarrassment of the Italian 
delegates. 

Mussolini did not hesitate to come to Italy’s defense. This thing 
they call imperialism, he said, is nothing unusual or new, nothing to be 
alarmed at. It is but the natural need of expansion which all healthy 
individuals or nations feel. “ Imperialism is the eternal and immutable 
law of life. At bottom it is but the need, desire and will for expansion 
which every individual and every live and virile people have inside 
them. . - . President Wilson, in a sense, as is not difficult to demon- 
strate, is the greatest and most fortunate of all the imperialists.” 
France and England, he emphasized, were busily cementing their new 
imperial holdings, and it was only poor Italy who was being cheated 
out of her rights by the diplomatic hypocrisy of her plutocratic neigh- 
bors and by the renunciations of her decrepit statesmen. 

The internal aspects of the situation, however, soon overshadowed 
the defeats at Versailles. One after another the old statesmen began to 
talk as though the war had proved to be a delusion for Italy. And, 
what was more, the masses began to feel the delusion. A depreciating 
currency, enormous debts, general unemployment (especially for the 
thousands of dempbilized veterans), rising prices — rapidly created 
an economic situation which smacked of anything but of a glorious 
victory. The ensuing strikes merely aggravated the evils. The theory 
that Italy had been deluded therefore found congenial soil. 

It spread all the more easily because it was embedded in a tradition 
much older than the war, that is, in the economic interpretation of his- 
tory. Marxian sociologists had found it easy enough to explain Italy’s 
economic poverty and political weakness by her lack of natural re- 
sources, which lack was also claimed to have produced inevitably a lack 
of capacity in the Italian people. Italians were said to be the poor 
products of a poor soil. The elaboration of this theory had been a 
favorite theme of Italian scientists for decades, and taking their clue 
from the would-be ^^pure” scientists, socialistic propagandists found 
it useful to their purposes to harp on the theme still more. If Italy was 
doomed to poverty and disgrace under the present economic order, 
good Italians could easily be converted into earnest socialists. South- 
ern writers then began to use the theory against the politics of the in- 
dustrial north. Giustino Fortunate was especially Influential In popu- 
larizing ‘‘the problem of the south,” and in his hands the theory took a 
definitely anti-nationalistic turn. It was pointed out that the political 
Diuturna, p, 228, v. Appendix No. 4. 



THE WAR PARTY SAVES ITS FACE 


39 

union of Italy was not an unmlxed blessing; that the north would always 
be retarded in its economic development by a naturally poorer south, and 
that the south in turn was handicapped in its agricultural development 
by the politics and tariffs imposed upon it by the more powerful north. 
Shortly before the war these ideas were made more popular than ever 
by the brilliant writings of a young democratic leader, Francesco Saverio 
Nittl.^® In his hands they ceased to be Ideas of revolt and took on a 
cynical and pessimistic flavor.^® Italy’s poverty and subserviency were 
taken as more or less ultimate decrees of fate to be faced without 
wincing and accepted grimly. Hence whatever misfortunes befell Italy 
were all grist for Nitti’s mill. Even during the war and with greater 
assurance during the peace negotiations and the economic disasters 
after the war, these pessimists simply said: I told you so! What else 
can you expect? We are now bound by iron necessity and must make 
the best of it.” The more Italy went on the rocks, the more they pro- 
claimed their insight into Italian politics and their claim to ‘‘ leadership.” 
The “humiliation of Versailles” and the economic crisis were there- 
fore heralded as the natural consequences of the war, which any sci- 
entifically minded man might have foreseen, and the responsibility for 
which was to be placed on the shoulders of those young irresponsibles 
who had so gaily “ willed ” the war, 

Mussolini was quick to sense this danger for the ex-interventionists 
and tried to place his opponents, not himself, on the defensive. He 
began his attack during the darkest days of the war, following the defeat 
of Caporetto, when the pessimists merely smiled a bitter smile, not 
daring at the time to come out with their thoughts. Mussolini guessed 
them and attacked them at once: “ The factor ^ man ’ is the fundamental 
one and all the mechanical means of the world are Insufficient to give 
victory if the soldier’s spirit is found wanting and vice versa. , . . Des- 
tiny is in us, for what is called destiny is but the confession of our 
imperfect knowledge of the causes which govern the turns of human 
fortune. The cause of the defeat is in us. . . . The forces of recovery 
are in us. . . . There exists an external mechanical fatality in things, 
but there exists also a human will, which does not whine under the 
blows that seem unforeseen, but dominates them and gathers experience 
from them. The ‘ fatality,’ if one may call it so, of Caporetto has been 
dominated by our will for victory.” In June when victory seemed to 
support his argument, he continued as follows: “ If October 24 was, as 
it actually was, a moral defeat, then today is our great moral victory. 

2** See for example his }^or^ e Sud. 

V. Gentile: Che cosa e il fascismo, pp. 245 ff- Also Appendix No. 29. 

27 Diuturtuty pp. 163, 175—6. 



20 


ITALIAN IDEALISM 

Very well then, without taking on the airs of chauvinism, which Is out 
of the question, we may be allowed to show our pride at being Italians, 
the Intimate joy of belonging to this people, capable of finding itself 
again, of beginning anew, of remaking itself, while other peoples, cast 
into the depths, no longer find the energy for regaining their feet and 
going ahead/' 

For a while Mussolini took the defensive with this idea. He defended 
the war, claimed that its major objectives had been attained, urged 
the ratification of the Treaty of Rapallo and even publicly opposed 
d'Annunzio's obstructionism. But when he saw the drift of events, 
the growing discontent with the terms of Versailles, the success of 
d'Annunzio's defiance, and the exasperation of the people over economic 
conditions, he shifted his tactics and took the offensive. He admitted 
that the ''war had been won and the peace lost," and that Italy had a 
perfect right to be disillusioned. But whose fault was it? Not the 
natural poverty nor the moral inferiority of the Italian people was to 
blame; not her readiness to fight the war and to make enormous sacri- 
fices; but rather that handful of pessimistic, timid, degenerate old 
“ statesmen " who threw away what Italy had dearly won. NItti espe- 
cially was seized upon as the personification of " defeatism " and cyni- 
cism and the hatred and abuse which were vented on him far exceeded 
anything he might have deserved personally. He and his materialistic 
disprezzQ of the Italian people were made the scapegoats of the terrible 
aftermath of the war. 

And ever since, the idea of the supremacy of moral over material 
forces has been a favorite theme with the fascisti. Especially in 1919, 
when Nitti seemed triumphant, it was revived louder than ever, as one 
of the cornerstones of the fascist faith. But it was now enlarged to 
include not only Italy's capacity to win the war, but Italy's capacity to 
found a new empire, to revive the glories and primacy of ancient Rome. 

At this point the tradition of philosophic idealism in Italy came to the 
fascists' support During the nineteenth century, while pessimistic 
materialism and positivism were developing in the north, from the 
south there came a vigorous strain of patriotic idealism, led by the most 
distinguished of Italian philosophers. It is customary in Italy to begin 
this tradition with Giam Battista Vico, who has been erected into the 
father of Italian philosophy and science, as Descartes has been for the 
French. He laid the foundations for the attack on the French ration- 
alists, an attack intended in part as a defense of the Catholic tradition 
which always has been supreme in the south of Italy, and in part as an 
attempt at the " new science " which attempted to give an Italian basis 

Diuturna^ p. 193. v. Diuturna^ pp. 251 if. 



21 


THE MORAL PRIMACY OF ITALY 

for the science of international relations. This double interest again 
found a champion in Vincenzo Cuoco, an Italian Edmund Burke, who, 
disillusioned by the failure of the Neapolitan Revolution of 1799, 
nounced the pretensions of the French Enlightenment and reasserted the 
necessity of cultivating tradition, especially, of course. Catholic Italian 
tradition. 

In the nineteenth century, parallel with the revival of Italy’s national 
political ambitions, Itallanism in philosophy was cultivated by a whole 
line of famous scholars and men of letters, on the literary and political 
side by Alfieri, Manclni, Foscolo, Botta, Leopardi, Carducci and Maz- 
zini; on the side of historical and philosophical interpretations, by Ros- 
mini, Gioberti, Spaventa, and Croce. 

The classic expression of the patriotism embedded in Italian philo- 
sophic idealism is to be found in GLoberti’s/^ Del Primato Morale e Civile 
degli Italiani^^ (On the Moral and Civil Primacy of the Italians). In 
opposition to the French and the German schools of philosophy which 
were then dominant in Italy, he developed a Catholic idealism. The 
starting point of his philosophy is neither reason nor sense but creation^ 
as a primary, simple datum. God or Universal Being creates particu- 
lar existences, and all things participate In the divine process in so far 
as they are creative. “The protological formula: ^ Being creates ex- 
istences,’ when applied to human society in general becomes: religion 
creates morality and human civilization, . . . from which most general 
truth we are led to this practical conclusion: theJJJatholic religion has 
created the morality and civilization of Italy. Christianity created all 
the European nations; but especially Italy, for it elected her as its first- 
born, and established Its throne in her and in her attained the height 
of its splendor. Hence sprang our own precocious civilization, for we 
were already cultured and de-paganized when the rest of Europe was 
still dormant and toiling in barbarism. Providence chose the Italian 
land for this high destiny, nourishing a spark of truth in it ab antico and 
molding there a race wonderfully adapted in genius and intelligence for 
subjecting the whole world in Christian obedience. . . . Italy is the 
priestly nation among the great body of redeemed peoples ; Christianity’s 
head, as other peoples should be its arms, as they actually were in the 
long war waged by civilization against the sword of the Saracens. Nor 
did the inhabitants of this peninsula give to other peoples merely divine 
gifts, but also every other civil and human good; and all the great 
intellects of Europe, who enhanced in any measure the glory of their 
countries, lit their lamps at the living flame of Italian genius.” 

“ France and the whole of Europe proportionally are heading towards 
Gioberti: Dd Buono. 184.3, 



22 


THE MORAL PRIMACY OF ITALY 

barbarism and are nearly at the doors of a second Middle Age. ... To 
repair these none too remote perils, European civilization must be re- 
established a second time, by recalling it to its Christian and Catholic 
origins and extinguishing the heterodoxy which for two centuries reigns 
in all its parts. . . . When a civilization is to be rebuilt a moral center 
of action must be established where the source of motion may reside 
and whence movement may be spread to all its parts as from the center 
to the circumference. History teaches us that every civilization has its 
special seat in one country or city as its base, which becomes morally 
the capital of the civilized world. . . . The center of Ideal civilization 
should be there where the knowledge of its principles is maintained 
whole and intact. . . . The knowledge of the principles can only be 
found in. the revealed word. . . . The revealed word being inseparable 
from the ecclesiastical word, the Catholic Church is the only guardian 
of the ideal principles. . . . Therefore the center of the civilizing 
process is there where the center of, Catholicism is. . . . Now since 
Italy is the center of the latter it follows that Italy Is the true head of 
civilization and Rome is the ideal metropolis of the world. . . . Rome 
morally speaking is not only the eternal city but the innate city, that is, 
born with the first of men. ... For the civil and cosmopolitan pri- 
macy of Italy the mere safeguarding of principle does not suffice; in 
addition their unfolding must take place in the double form of science 
and action, of ideas and facts- . . . Italians, therefore, have the special 
duty of cultivating encyclopedic knowledge and art in all their achieve- 
ments in order to enable them to exercise in practice the primacy which 
they potentially possess and can rightfully claim.” 

This thesis was expanded into the two large volumes of the Primato, 
in which Gioberti outdoes the Hegelian philosophy of history and 
which he hoped would initiate the spiritual and political risorgimento 
of Italy. Though his own realistic” scheme of union failed, the 
general success of the risorgimento assured a prominent place to the 
theme of the Primato, The variations which it received were too nu- 
merous to describe here. I select one only, and that from the writings 
of Bertrando Spaventa, by whom it was given a.„Hegelian flavpr^ 

Italian philosophy is everywhere and in itself the whole of philoso- 
phy. It is not a particular movement of thoug'ht, but, I would almost 
say, thought itself in its fulness, the totality of all its movements. I 
am not speaking of ancient Italy; its philosophy belongs to that of 
Greece. I speak of modern Italy, of that Italy which must be, as a true 
phrase puts it, the Italy of the Italians. This universality in which all 
opposites meet, this harmonious unity in which all aspects of European 
Gioberti: Sul Progresso. Ch. III. 



THE MORAL PRIMACY OF ITALY 


23 

genius are united is precisely our national genius. It recalls the uni- 
versal character of ancient Rome, without however its abstract form. 
This forceful, variegated and complicated nature requires a long and 
difficult undertaking to complete Itself. It must struggle not only with 
other people but with itself. To really be, it must overcome itself. 
Hence It is not without reason that Italy has been the last to be seated 
at the table of the nations and that Italy must still struggle for mastery 
over itself.’’ 

By Benedetto Croce this idea was further developed, as a contribution 
to the history of philosophy. The philosophy of Gioberti had been ob- 
viously part of his political propaganda; the researches of Croce were 
more disinterested. Having learned from Spaventa and from Hegel 
directly that the history of ideas has itself an ideal structure, he began 
to investigate the history of Italian philosophy from this point of view. 
He soon succeeded in giving a new form to the history of European 
thought, which not only revealed a distinctive and continuous Italian 
tradition, but also made this tradition an indispensable element for 
the interpretation of the evolution of philosophy in general. In short, 
it was discovered that almost unconsciously Italy had been developing 
its idea ” and that this idea was an indispensable unit in the dialectic 
of history. 

Croce, as we have said, had no political axe to grind in all this, but 
his slightly younger colleague, Giovanni Gentile, made a political gospel 
out of it, which though it received a vague formulation even before 
the rise of fascism needed only the stimulus of the fascist revolution to 
put it on its feet. Gentile’s version is evidently reminiscent of Gio- 
berti. According to him and his fascist disciples there are two Italics: 
the classic and the living, the accomplishments of the past and the 
deeds of today, Italy as it can be seen in its monuments and Italy as 
it can be felt in the process of creating itself. The risorgimento itself, 
w'hich marks the beginning of Italy’s rebirth, had become little more 
than a literary tradition until fascism brought it back to life. For the 
risorgimento, so the fascist historians say, was infected a bit by the 
poison of the French Revolution. The carbonari spread the French 
doctrines of federalism and constitutionalism and democracy, but these 
ideas were gradually supplanted by the strictly Italian ones — those of 
the nation, liberty from foreign oppression and the necessity of sacrifice 
and ideal devotion. The pioneers of the risorgimento revived Dante’s 
idea of the nation, Machiavelli’s idea of the need of unity and Vico’s 
spiritual conception of Italian social life; and these ideas were synthe- 
sized by Mazzini and Giobeiti, who mark the intellectual culmination of 

Quoted in Gerarchia, November 1926, p. 739. 



24 NATIONALIST RECOVERY 

the risorgimento. But the new Italian state turned its back on this 
Italian intellectual orientation of the risorgimento and tried to live 
on the Imported principles of the F rench Revolution. It fumbled along 
for decades in this way, until finally fascism rescued it, denounced the 
democratic French ideology, reinstated Mazzini and Gioberti, and fol- 
lowed the pure Italian tradition built up by Dante, Machiavelli and 
Vico. Hence fascism, though a revolution, is really to be regarded as 
the completion of the work of the risorgimento. The new Italy could 
not rise on the basis of French abstractions, but had, to be nourished 
from the living streams of its own national experience. With fascism 
the new Italy passed from abstract conception into practical reality. 
And with it, Italian idealism too passed from speculative formulation 
into concrete actuality, from idea into act.®^ The emphasis on Italian 
tradition therefore represents an attack on so-called abstract and specu- 
lative German idealism. Croce himself is criticized by the younger 
disciples as having yielded too much to the methods and concepts of 
Hegel. True Idealism, they say, is based not on German concepts but 
on Italian action. In short the traditionalism of the Italian idealists 
from Cuoco down is really an empiricism, an upholding of their own 
experience in the face of foreign dialectical systems. 

Italy’s participation in the war and her subsequent policy of expan- 
sion, when set against this philosophic background, no longer appear 
as a sacred egoism” in pursuit of material aggrandizement, but as 
the very essence of Idealism, a demonstration that God, the immanent 
spirit, had moved from Germany and is now manifesting himself in 
Italy, his new abode in the creative process of history. 

Thus Italian idealism came to conclusions which were most congenial 
to the ideas of Mussolini and his associates, though the background and 
philosophic orientation were quite different. 

But the first group to give imperialism a fresh impetus after the war 
was neither Mussolini and his associates, nor the idealists; it was the 
nationalists. They were the first to suspect the trend of events at 
Vefsi^tltes, and were also the most Indignant at it. They saw through ” 
the war at once, realized that Italy had been deluded and prepared for 
the greater fight to come. In December 1918 the veteran Nationalists, 
Francesco Coppola and Alfredo Rocco, founded their review, Politica. 
It opened with a ringing manifesto,” which gave the signal for na- 
tional revolt. It pointed out the great gulf between the Ideology of the 

On this subject in addition to the writings of Gentile (see Appendix No. 29), 
see Valentino Piccoli in Critica Fascista^ January 1, 1927, pp. 6-7; Agostino Savelli: 
Risorgimento e Fascismo in 11 Giornale di Folitica e di Letieraturay January 1927, 
pp. 3-17* 



THE NEW ROMAN EMPIRE 


25 

war and the real motives and issues of the war. The war for democracy, 
individualism, peace, self-determination and internationalism was 
really a struggle for existence of peoples and empires, a war for world 
dominion. This corruption of ideology was traced back to the 
French Revolution and it was pointed out that, from the first, democratic 
philosophy was more or less of a blind to the real facts. In France it 
concealed a rising commercial bourgeoisie; in England a conservative in- 
dustrial class and In America an instinctive spiritual imperialism.” 
The deceit was kept up during the war partly out of habit, partly be- 
cause statesmen thought it would be easier to win the support of the 
masses by appealing to them In terms of these sacred principles and 
rights than in terms of national self-interest, duty and sacrifice. Now 
the Italian nationalists proposed to tear down the blind and face the 
facts. In place of the ideology of the French Revolution they suggested 
the philosophy of Rome, both of the Roman Empire and the Roman 
Church. They suggested that the struggle between nations is so 
intense that internal class struggle must cease. The state must be made 
strong (in the Machiavellian, not in the materialistic German, sense ”) 
and it must frankly cease to be merely national and become imperial. 
The manifesto culminates as follows : Everything calls Italy to the 
resumption of her imperial mission: the tradition of Rome, of Venice 
and of Genoa; the political genius of the race, which has always made 
it a master in the art of governing peoples; her geographical position, 
which links her by land to continental Europe and at the same time 
bids her dominate the whole Mediterranean basin, where today the 
heart of three continents beats. 

Here lies the duty and the mission of Italy, for, as history teaches, 
whenever life returns to this peninsular land of destiny, welding it into 
an ethnic and political unity, into a strong and organized power, the 
iron necessity of things has driven it beyond its boundaries towards 
that sea of three continents which washes its shores and for which it has 
a natural and historic vocation superior to every force and to every 
opposing will.” 

Politica immediately became the most important spokesman of na- 
tionalist doctrine and of an aggressive foreign policy. And what is 
more, many of its contributors were idealists (Gentile contributed to 
the first number) and fascists, so that it early became the Intellectual 
center of the movement which was destined soon to unite these various 
groups. 

The fascist propagandists now carried the notion of the New Italy to 
its extremest forms. Italy, they said, was about to take up again the 
PoUucaj December 1918, pp. 1--17. 



26 THE NEW ROMAN EMPIRE 

great thread of the Roman Empire. Italy is by its very nature and by 
long tradition imperial, expansive, dominating, pioneering. But this 
empire need not take the traditional military form, It would take the 
form of peaceful growth, economic conquest and above all an imposing 
merchant marine. Mussolini, for example, wrote: “We wish to con- 
vince Italians that beside the vile, putrid and pestiferous Italy of the 
politicians, who are jousting in the House of Parliament — really but 
filthy parasites on the better blood of the nation — there is another 
Italy: one which causes foreigners to sit up and take notice, the Italy 
which is working, preparing itself, striving to live and to conquer, the 
Italy of tomorrow, which will populate the sky with swift aeroplanes 
and the sea with powerful ships, which will no longer have its genera- 
tions of small employees and scribblers of useless paper, but generations 
of sailors, who will carry the tri-color of Italy over all the oceans and all 
the shores of the world.” The Mediterranean is destined to return 
to us. Rome is destined to become once more the city which directs the 
civilization of the whole of Western Europe. Let us raise the banner 
of the Empire, of our Imperialism, not to be confused with the Prussian 
and English types. Let us pass on to the new and rising generation 
this flame of our passion to make Italy one of the nations without which 
it is impossible to conceive the future history of humanity.” 

Imperialism now became rampant. The adoption of the black uni- 
forms and rituals of the Fiume Arditi and the Romanism of the d^An- 
nunzian faction gave the empire visible symbols. The March on Rome 
naturally fanned the flame still more. On January 12, 1924, the editors 
of the newspaper VImperOj with the cooperation of Corradini, erected a 
tablet in the Chigi Palace to the memory of Crispi, “ the last hero of 
the risorgimento and the first of Italy’s greatness.” Mussolini’s personal 
bearing and public utterances have become increasingly imperial; and 
his followers far surpass him in their wild exaggerations and bold 
metaphors. Italy has regained, they say, not merely her dignity but 
her moral primacy. The talk of Caesar and Napoleon is a common- 
place. Italy is now more than a nation, it is an Empire. 

This passage from nationalism to imperialism is supposed to mean 
much more than the mere resumption of “ Africanism ” and more too 
than the Mare Nostrum policy. It means a revolution in the moral 
structure and aims of the Italian people. “A nation is based on an 
immanent idea and value; an empire on a transcendent value. A na- 
tion is, at bottom, economic (hedonistic) ; an empire is ethical. ... A 

Diutuma^ p. 264.. 

From his Trieste Speech, February 6, 1921. First edition of Discorsi, pp. 
155-1705 see Appendix No, 4. 



PRIME MINISTER’S FIRST CONCERN 27 

nation serves Its citizens, but subjects serve an empire. A nation is a 
practical concern; an empire is a duty; the former may be a conviction, 
the latter is an inspiration. . . . The traditional nature of our people 
is abandoning the old conception of the nation . . . and inclining 
towards that of empire. Just as our Church is in essence imperial. 
The problem of the modern world is in fact no longer a dialectic of 
nations but of empires that supersede nations. There is the industrial 
and colonial empire of the British, and now also the money and banking 
empire of the Americans; and Germany got in the way of both. . . . 
These empires are the dominant forces of our time and the undoubted 
products of the liberal and rationalist type of mind; but they are des- 
tined to an ephemeral career, for they lack the two essential elements 
of every imperial organization, Inspiration and strength. And to avoid 
their fate they are trying to retrace their steps and bind themselves to- 
gether in the democratic compromise of the League of Nations. ... It 
is high time that the chirping of these egoistic, prattling and villainous 
nations and scoundrel-nations disgust and irritate all of us. We do not 
want Italy to be like that.” 


IV. Fascist Foreign Policy 

The concrete working out of this Imperial program proved somewhat 
tortuous. Foreign policy has been Mussolini’s prime personal Interest, 
and until the Matteotti crisis in 1924, almost his exclusive concern. 
Mussolini seemed to have the idea that after the March on Rome the 
internal situation would take care of itself, and that the “ internal and 
financial consolidation of the country ” opened the doors for an ag- 
gressive foreign policy. But this statement had to be repeated year after 
year, as internal problems kept looming up, until the Matteotti mur- 
der and the economic battle ” forced Mussolini to take a more real- 
istic view of Italy’s condition and to temper his ambitions to his actual 
resources. 

The Italian Parliament never did know what was going on in the 
realm of foreign affairs and during the fascist regime, with the abolition 
of the superfluous Parliamentary Committee for Foreign Policy, the 
ministry has had a perfectly free hand. Furthermore now that the 
government controls the press, it can exercise an almost absolute sway 
over so-called public opinion and can give the appearance of moral and 
intellectual solidarity of the Italian nation ” in its relations with other 
nations, and in its interpretation of incidents.” 


Pellizzi: Fascismo Aristocraua^ p. 164-5, 173-4, 



28 LEAGUE OF PLUTOCRATIC NATIONS 

The only idea which has remained constant and basic is distrust of 
the League of Nations, and of internationalism in general and reliance 
on specific economic agreements with as many countries as might be 
.useful to Italy’s commercial expansion. Niente per niente ” was Mus- 
solini’s laconic formula. He put his faith in bargaining for specific 
> objectives rather than in legislating for the universe. 

Fascist contempt for the League of Nations is perfectly frank. It 
is true that immediately after the war, when Italy still felt its victory 
and imagined that along with France and England it too had finally 

arrived,” Wilsonian internationalism was given a hearty welcome. 
Mussolini himself on October 20, 1918, as a delegate for the wounded 
veterans at a League of Nations meeting in Milan, had made an ardent 
plea for the League.^® He claimed that a crisis in history had been 
reached and that justice could at last rule the nations. He pointed out 
that Italy was really the home of internationalism, witness Cattaneo 
and Mazzini ! However, he dwelt at length on the initial difiiculties, of 
which he seemed very conscious. Again during the next spring, when 
resentment over the war was already becoming alarming, Mussolini de- 
fended the democratic ideas of Wilson and the outcome of the war. 
At the founding of the fasci di combattimento in Milan, March 23, 1919, 
Mussolini said; “The war has achieved positive results, for in none 
of the victorious nations is there a triumph of reaction. In all of them 
there is a progress toward the broadest political and economic democ- 
racy. . . . The war, in spite of certain details which may be of- 
fensive for the more or less intelligent, has given us all that we 
asked.”®® But he continued more guardedly as follows; “The Con- 
gress of the twenty-third of March declares itself opposed to the im- 
perialism of other peoples at the expense of Italy, and to any Italian 
imperialism at the expense of other peoples, and accepts the supreme 
postulate of the League of Nations, which presupposed the integration 
of each of the nations, an Integration which in the case of Italy should 
be realized on the Alps and on the Adriatic with the vindication and 
annexation of Fiume and Dalmatia. . . , Imperialism is based on the 
vital forces of every people that naturally tends to expand economically 
and spiritually. What distinguishes the various imperialisms are the 
means used. Now the means which we can and shall choose will 
never be the means of barbarous penetration such as those adopted by 
the Germans. And we claim: let all be idealists or none, one’s own 
Interest must be looked after. We do not understand why idealism 
should be preached by those nations that are in favorable positions 

V. First Edition Dfscorst^ pp. 147—153. 

39 pjj.5^ edition Discorsi, p. 63. 



I LEAGUE OF PLUTOCRATIC NATIONS 29 

to those that are suffering, for that is too easy. We want our place in 
the world because we have a right to it. 

We reaffirm . . . the federal postulate of the League of Nations. 
It Is also ours In its general aim, but let there be no misunderstanding; 
if the League of Nations Is to be a solemn conclave on the part of the 
rich nations against the proletarian nations for the purpose of fixing 
and making permanent the conditions of equilibrium which actually 
obtain in the world at present, let us look it square in the face. I under- 
stand perfectly that the nations that have already arrived are able to 
establish such insurance premiums for their wealth and present posi- 
tion of domination. But this is not idealism, it is profiteering and self- 
interest.’’ 

Less than a year later, in his Trieste speech outlining fascist foreign 
policy, he said flatly: ^‘Fascism does not believe in the vitality nor in 
the principles which inspire the so-called League of Nations.” And 
he went on to maintain that Italy must gradually free herself from the 
“ Holy Alliance of the plutocratic western nations ” and conduct an 
independent foreign policy of eastward expansion. Later he became still 
more outspoken and said frankly that the only reason Italy did not 
withdraw from the ^‘Anglo-French duet at Geneva” was because it 
would do no good and would merely remove Italy’s only chance to 
offer a bit of resistance to their domination.^^ 

The talk of disarmament, of international peace and cooperation is 
generally regarded as the sheerest hypocrisy. The discussion of the 
so-called “ protocol ” at the League of Nations was characterized 
by Mussolini as “ lyric, with a tendency toward mysticism.” 
Other fascist writers are inclined to be more violent in their language. 
The “Christian internationalism of the Presbyterian Wilson ” 
and the “Jewish internationalism” of the bolshevists were alike 
regarded as Ideological nonsense, each invented to serve as a screen 
for the growing imperial powers respectively of Wall Street and of 
Moscow. 

Resentment toward the allies far outweighs hatred toward Austria 
and Germany.^^ The entrance of Germany into the League has molli- 
fied Italy’s attitude somewhat, since it makes the League Council 
amenable to a continuation of the Locarno diplomacy. But in the 
meantime foreign policy has gone so far in Italy without the League 

V. Appendix Nos, 4, 5, 6. 

La Nuova Politica^ II, pp. 102—4. 

La Nuo<oa Political III, p. 505. 

In this connection see Count Antonio Cippico: Italy the Central Problem of the 
Mediterranean i esp. pp. xi, 44 '” 47 > 64 “ 65 ) 



3 o LATIN VERSUS ANGLO-SAXON WORLD 

that there is little danger of a revival of internationalist sentiment or 
League diplomacy, and Spain’s withdrawal is held up as the beginning 
of the end. 

Nor is fascism in the least Interested in cutting down Italy’s army or 
navy. Though the regular army has been reduced, the militia more than 
compensates for the reduction both in point of men and of money, and 
though it may be expensive it at least gives an honorable occupation 
to many who would otherwise be unemployed. 

An increased maritime power is one of the major objectives of the 
regime. First of all a great merchant marine Is aimed at, but naturally 
as a consequence the navy must be big enough to dominate the Mediter- 
ranean. Mussolini’s lecture ” at the University of Perugia, October 5, 
1926, on the sea power of ancient Rome, was no mere academic foible. 
In the spring of 1927 Mussolini frankly declined Coolidge’s invitation 
to another naval conference on the ground that Italy could not further 
weaken its naval power in the face of Its Mediterranean neighbors, 
who were not signatories of the Washington agreements. It does not 
follow from such a policy that Italy is consciously preparing for war. 
On the contrary the fascisti are convinced that in the present conflict 
of national interests, a nation that disarms merely invites war upon 
itself. 

It is impossible to go into the detailed course of fascist foreign policy 
but we might point out the chief general changes of front which have 
taken place in response to changing conditions. 

At first, and up until the disillusionment, the general picture of Italy’s 
role in the world was, as Mussolini put it, to take part in the struggle 
of East against West, of England, France and Italy against Germany, 
Russia and the East in general. At that time the imagination of Italian 
politicians was still dominated on the one hand by the fear of Austria 
and Germany and on the other by the expectation that Italy’s policy 
of eastward expansion would find its chief foe in Russia. A minor but 
closer enemy would be Greece. Mussolini was prepared to patch up a 
temporary peace with Jugoslavia and to free his hands for spreading 
Italian influence in the direction of Montenegro, Albania, the Greek 
Islands, and thence up into the Black Sea. The economic alliance 
between Germany and Russia seemed to confirm this policy. Hence 
immediately after the March on Rome Mussolini’s own Popolo d'ltalia 
suggested to him the advisability of inflicting further guarantees on 
Austria and of erecting a neutral East Alpine Confederation under 
Italian protection between Austria and Germany. 

To the surprise of all, Mussolini promptly and officially repudiated the 
idea. He also put a stop to the irredentist propaganda against Switzer- 



LATIN VERSUS ANGLO-SAXON WORLD 31 

land for the annexation of Italian Switzerland.^^ At the same time he 
urged an economic treaty with Germany. For in the meantime he had 
conceived quite another policy — a policy of resentment against the 
Allies, and first of all against the Anglo-Saxon world.” Italy’s debts 
to England and to the United States, the depreciation of Italian cur- 
rency on the English market, capped by the immigration exclusion act 
of the United States, produced a spirit of bitterness, or rather of covetous 
contempt, for the English-speaking world.^® Italy must learn to stand 
alone, to shake off its subserviency to the “ plutocratic western nations,” 
whom Italian labor has enriched and Italian victory defended, but who 
now turn and trample on their poorer and weaker ally. The resent- 
ment against the United States gradually was transformed into a frank 
admiration of its economic imperialism ” and a pious awe of its all- 
engrossing financial power. 

For practical purposes the Entente had been destroyed and Italian 
foreign policy now took a definitely anti-British form. The revived 
Mediterranean for the Mediterraneans ” formula was directed first 
of all against England. A month before the March on Rome Mussolini 
wrote in the Popolo d’ Italia: We must be prepared for the possibility 
of putting an anti-British policy into practical operation. It is not in 
Italy’s interest to contribute to the maintenance of British imperialism; 
rather it is in her interest to help in its destruction. The doctrine of 
the rise and fall of empires now became a current theme of speculation. 
The stars of Russia and of Italy were rising. The sun had just set on 
the dreams of a Teutonic Empire. Would the British be the next to 
collapse? Each difficulty which England had to face was heralded as 
the beginning of the end. The coal strike, especially, caused Mussolini 
and his disciples to “ stand in awe ” as they watched the unrolling of 
the historic fate ” which presides over the fortunes of empires and 
decrees that “ one people shall rise and another decline ’? ! 

Some fascist writers wanted to encourage the British possessions in 
the Mediterranean (especially Malta) to revolt.*^^ Turkey was to be 
befriended in its struggle both against Greece and against England. 
Economic agreements were to be made with Russia not only to offset 
the agreements being made between England and Russia, but also to 

On the Swiss dispute see Popolo d^ItaUa, May 9 and 22, 1924.5 Gerarchia III, 
p. 683 ff 5 Mussolini: La Nuova Politica^ III, p. 444.. 

This theme was revived after the Thoiry agreements. See for example Cop- 
pola in FoUtica^ August 1926. v. Appendix No. 9. 

V. Quotations from Soffici, Carli, etc. 5 in Appendix Nos, 7, 8, 10, ii. 
Also Mussolini’s report as Minister of Foreign Affairs, June 1928. 

V, Gorgolini, U Paschmo nella vita iUduma^ p. 169 ff. 



LATIN VERSUS ANGLO-SAXON WORLD 


32 

get coal and other raw materials through Mediterranean channels. In- 
stead of from Great Britain. In a series of editorials published Immedi- 
ately after the treaty of Rapallo and during the Flume excitement 
Mussolini pleaded with the nationalists to let the Dalmatian issue rest 
for the present and to turn to the wider issues of imperial expansion. 
Let another generation finish the conquest of Dalmatia, he said. We 
have done our bit in this direction and can do no more under the present 
international line-up. Our expansion must take new and bolder forms. 

I am more of an imperialist than you,” he told them. He pointed out 
the possibilities of trade with Russia, of coal and other resources which 
could be brought to Italy from the Black Sea basin on more favorable 
terms than the northern powers could grant. This policy would give 
Italy an Immediate opportunity to build up a great merchant marine in 
the Mediterranean. “ I wish to demonstrate,” he wrote, ‘‘ that by an 
eastward policy Italy may attain her emancipation from the plutocracy 
of the west and may turn toward the vastest and most promising possi- 
bilities of economic and spiritual expansion. ... To free Itself from 
the yoke of occidental plutocracy, Italy has no other row to hoe but 
the one already indicated for it by the dominant power.” 

This high-sounding doctrine continued to be preached until about the 
time of the Corfu affair, in September 1923, but for various reasons it 
was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. Mussolini had made 
little diplomatic headway against England, and after the Corfu affair 
he practically gave up trying. Instead he cultivated England’s cooper- 
ation, or perhaps more accurately, he accommodated himself to Eng- 
land’s foreign policy; for the English seem to have taken the initiative. 
In May 1923 the British royal couple visited Rome. In September came 
the Corfu “ blunder.” Next spring the royal visit was returned by the 
Italian king and queen. Things now began to go more smoothly and the 
urge to the east took on a practical form with the definite annexation 
of the Dodecanese Islands and Rhodes, the pacification of Tripoli, the 
acquisition of Jubaland from England, the partition of Abyssinia, and 
the treaty with Yemen. Quite recently it has even been suggested that 
Palestine would make an ideal mandate for Italy, both because of the 
historic connections between Rome and Jerusalem and because Italy is 
least troubled by the Semitic problem. 

Meanwhile England had shifted Italy’s attentions from Greece to 
Turkey, and had used the Italian threat against Turkey In order to 
acquire Mosul for itself. England practically put a stop to Italy’s at- 
tempts at extensive commercial agreements with Russia and convinced 
Italy that Russia had better be an enemy. To compensate, however* 

Diuturna^ p. 269. 



FRANCE, THE ARCH ENEMY 33 

England supported Italy’s Balkan poliqr, undermining the French 
hegemony. 

Against this France naturally protested, as well as against the 
English-Italian agreements about Abyssinia and Arabia, in which 
France was not consulted. Italy replied that France had excluded 
her from the Tangiers Conference, and that the Tholry agreement with 
Germany had undermined both the Entente and Locarno and had 
forced each nation to look after its own interests. 

In the negotiations with Germany over reparations Italy initially 
sided with F ranee against England and Mussolini sent Italian engineers 
into the Ruhr. But when the occupation of the Ruhr proved to be a 
military expedition of the French rather than a joint commission of 
engineers as Mussolini had been led to believe, he withdrew, and from 
then on England and Italy were usually allied against France in the 
negotiations. Meanwhile the nationalists on whom Mussolini became 
increasingly dependent insisted on keeping alive the Dalmatia issue, thus 
offending Jugoslavia and Indirectly France. 

All things now pointed to France rather than to England as the chief 
enemy of Italy^s Mediterranean policy. France is a very popular 
enemy in Italy anyway. The French Interference in the politics of 
the nsorgimento is not forgotten. The problem ” of Savoy and Nice 
is hinted at every now and then and occasionally articles about the 

Italian Island of Corsica appear. Crispi was revived with great 
ceremony and proclaimed a predecessor of fascism. Extraordinary 
solicitation began to be felt for the fate of the Italians in Tunis. Spain 
was encouraged to resist France in Tangiers and finally the Spanish- 
Italian alliance made it evident to all that France was aimed at. Count 
Sforza had already been forced to resign as ambassador to France be- 
cause he refused to take part in an anti-French diplomacy. Most 
serious of all were the incidents centering about the anti-fasdst 
emigres in France and the attempts on Mussolini’s life, all of which 
were capitalized to the utmost by the Italian press to stir up bad feeling 
against F ranee. The newspaper, Impero, went so far as to suggest an 
immediate alliance with Germany and the government itself became 
unusually friendly toward Germany. Nevertheless Italian anti-French 
policy probably aims less at war than at forcing France by diplomatic 
maneuvers to make colonial concessions in Africa or Syria. 

The Tholry conference in the summer of 1926 between French and 
German industrialists created a sensation, for it was a severe blow to 
Italy’s attempt at isolating France. It was the occasion of a strength- 
ening of the Anglo-Italian friendship and was followed by a much 
advertised and very cordial meeting between Chamberlain and Musso- 



34 THE BALKAN GAME 

linl. “Locarno is threatened L' was the cry; England and Italy must 
take steps immediately to safeguard their future. There was evident 
joy in the Italian press when the Thoiry policy met obstacles and the 
pessimism of Italy over a French-German rapprochement proved to be 
unfounded. 

Turkey joined hands with Russia. Thto came Italy^s recognition 
of Albanian independence and its declaration to uphold the existing 
pro-Italian regime. Whereupon Jugoslavia immediately turned to 
Russia. Italy, having already made a very friendly commercial treaty 
with Roumania in the summer of 1926, took occasion during the Anglo- 
Russian dispute over China to recognize formally the annexation of 
Bessarabia. This recognition had been agreed on at the time the 
treaty was negotiated but Italy was at the time still unwilling to offend 
Russia by its publication. Coming when it did the offense was pe- 
culiarly timely, especially for England. Economic treaties were nego- 
tiated with Austria, Czech o-Slovakia, Bulgaria and Hungary with an 
unusual display of friendship. In May 1927 Mussolini revived the 
Brenner Pass issue and pretended to see in Germany’s “ steel helmet 
parade and in Austria’s moves for union, an imminent danger. Again 
in February 1928, the problem of the harsh treatment of the German 
minorities in the Upper Adige flared up, but as quickly subsided. All 
this was evidently done for effect and served to draw attention from the 
Jugoslavian frontier, where the real troubje is expected. Overtures 
to Greece were apparently without success. The government of Panga- 
los had sought Italy’s aid against Turkey and in general had been 
very friendly toward Italy. But his fall from power upset the cordial 
relations and the present Greek government is allying itself with 
Jugoslavia. 

In March 1927 Italy’s whole policy was put to a concrete test by the 
war-scare between Jugoslavia and Italy over Albanian intrigues, Italy 
discovered, much to her satisfaction, that Jugoslavia was fairly well 
isolated except for her French support. A similar test case came the 
following winter when Italy was caught sending arms to Hungary. 
The incident revealed the fact that Italy had considerably weakened the 
Little Entente, that Roumania was in an embarrassing position, but on 
the whole still under French control, and that the League of Nations 
found it difficult to take decisive steps in such cases. The signing of the 
Franco-Jugoslavia Treaty was the signal for a general anti-French 
outburst in the Italian press, an outburst so Violent that England as 
well as France took steps toward a reconciliation. The arrival at Rome 
of the new French Ambassador in January 1928 was heralded in the 



EXPAND OR EXPLODE 


35 

English and French presses as a sign of rapprochement; but in Italy, 
the event merely served to raise hopes that France would make con- 
cessions. Accordingly Tunis, Syria, Corsica and other territories were 
mentioned as compensation for French interference in Jugoslavia. If 
only England could be detached from France, or France from Jugo- 
slavia! Otherwise diplomatic lines and policy are now taking fairly 
definite form. England and Italy versus Russia, Jugoslavia, Greece 
and Turkey — this much seems clear. The position of Hungary, Bul- 
garia and Poland is practically certain. Roumania, France and Ger- 
many are still the big puzzles of Italian diplomacy. 

It would be ridiculous, of course, at present to regard this as a military 
line-up of alliances ready for war, at least as long as England and 
France are on good terms. It is little more than the picture of inter- 
national relations which dominates the popular imagination of the ja- 
scisti and which to a certain extent controls their foreign policy. The 
economic situation is as yet favorable. But obviously war is expected 
before long. Mussolini in his speech of May 26, 1927, said: We must 
be ready at a given moment to mobilize five million men and be able 
to arm them; we must strengthen our navy and also our aviation, in 
which I believe more and more, and which must be so numerous and 
so powerful that the roar of its motors can drown out every other noise 
on the peninsula and the surface of its wings hide the sun from our land. 
Then tomorrow, when, between 1935 and 1940, we shall be at a point 
which I would call crucial for European history, we shall be able to make 
our voice heard and to see our rights finally recognized.^^ In his report 
as Minister of Foreign Affairs, June 1928, Mussolini referred to this 
statement of a year previously and softened It a little by explaining 
that the crucial point did not necessarily mean war. 

Meanwhile the government sticks to its formula of ^‘peaceful eco- 
nomic expansion ” in all countries, and seems to be well aware that a 
war, even a small one, at this time would be disastrous. On the other 
hand the rank and file of the fascist party are more than ready for 
war, preferably with France or Jugoslavia, and will be greatly disap- 
pointed if they fail to get one soon. The press Is inflammatory, to say 
the least, and the militia is eager to display its valor. The ex-squadrists 
and so-called intransigent fascists want war, almost cry for it.'*^ The 
rebirth of the military spirit is welcomed almost universally and is 
acclaimed by the fascisti as one of their most basic virtues. The general 
opinion, as I have heard it from many representative fascists, is that 
Italy must either fight or explode. We are forty millions, said Mus- 

V. Caxli, Appendix No. la. 



36 EXPAND OR EXPLODE 

solini, squeezed into our narrow but adorable peninsula, with its too 
many mountains and its soil which cannot nourish so many. There 
are around Italy countries that have a population smaller than ours and 
a territory double the size of ours. Hence it is obvious that the problem 
of Italian expansion in the world Is a problem of life and death for the 
Italian race. I say expansion: expansion in every sense: moral, political, 
economic, demographical.” In spite of this apparently explicit and 
official declaration of conquest, the context of these words as well as 
the activities of the government indicate that the immediate emphasis 
falls on the economic battle,” especially in the matter of emigration 
and colonial policy. 

Colonial development of course plays a large role in the fascist im- 
perial politics. It is the chief concern of FederzonI, Minister of Colo- 
nies, and in general of the nationalist wing of the Party. Mussolini^s 
voyage to Tripoli in 1926 and the Tripoli Exposition of 1927 have at- 
tracted unusual Interest to this colony. It is being developed rapidly. 
The colonial treaties with Great Britain and the Arab States are also 
indicative of a renewed and aggressive ‘^Africanism.” Nevertheless 
Italy cannot hope to find room in its own colonies In the near future for 
its whole surplus population. “ Tripoli,” said a young fascist to me, 
“will take at least twenty years to develop, and we need Immediate 
relief. We need land like Asia Minor which can give us two crops 
a year now; or like Tunis which has already been opened up.” Italy 
has repeatedly demanded a colonial mandate from her former allies, 
preferably Syria, and makes no secret of her desire for part of the 
Turkish coast. But such aspirations seem hopeless unless war is re- 
sorted to.®^ 

Barring this, expansion by emigration must still be the dominant 
concern of Italian foreign policy. It is a more serious problem than ever 
now that the doors are being closed and the consequent number of 
pent-in emigrants, calculated on the normal flow, is mounting Into the 
millions. The country is physically forced to expand, they say. Emi- 
gration is to be encouraged systematically, but (and this is the fascist 
emphasis) the emigrants are to be protected, organized, linked to the 
mother country by cultural and economic ties, so that they form an 
integral part of the Italian nation. “ And this is but our right,” says 
Rossoni, who was himself an emigrant, “ for others have always come 
into Italy to oppress and rob us, whereas we, when we leave Italy, have 

Mussolini: La Nuova Po Utica, I, p. loi. 

See in this connection Robert Michels: Sozialisfnus und Faszismus, II, pp. 55^ 
139J Roberto Cantalupo: PoUtica e agricultura ml Nord Africa, in Gerarchia, July 
1926, pp. 418-4295 and Federzoni: Yenti mesi di azione coloniale. 



INTERNATIONAL MORALITY 


37 

always gone with our art, our labor, our blood, with the red shirts of 
Garibaldi to fight for the liberty of other peoples.” 

Such a policy is aimed primarily at France, for in Tunis and southern 
France, where Italian immigration has noticeably increased since the 
war, the problem of de-nationalization has been most acute. France 
is being reproached continually for trying to rebuild Its dwindling popu- 
lation and repopulate its abandoned farms by Importing Italians, who 
are practically forced to become naturalized and soon become almost in- 
distinguishable from the native French. Italy has been more than glad 
to encourage this emigration, and has submitted per force to the French 
policy. But now the fascist formula is: we are willing to give you our 
labor, but you must not take our men. Our Latin brothers know very 
well that we willingly give them (for it is also in our own interest) the 
sweat of the Italian brow to make fruitful the French lands abandoned 
by them in their selfishness; but they must remember that souls can 
not be sold nor Is blood given for merely material compensation.” 

But it is evident to Italians and no doubt to their government that 
such a policy if rigorously insisted upon is bound to bring them into 
conflict with their neighbors and ultimately into war. Such a prospect, 
however, is faced not merely with confidence and courage but with 
positive exhilaration in the overflowing energies of the race, for it is 
but another tribute to its Imperial destiny. 

Apart from the theory that the Roman Empire never had a fall but 
merely a temporary relapse and that fascism is now reinstating the 
ancient and natural primacy of Roman civilization, little has been done 
as yet in developing a theory to sanction the practical aspirations of 
the new Italy. Being realistically minded, the fascisti are contented to 
accept their political exigencies with a minimum of intellectual fancy- 
work. Nevertheless even among these realists the question of right is 
raised from time to time, and an answer is being sought to the rather 
academic demand: What right has Italy to expand? The older thecjry, 
suggested by the nationalists before the Tripoli War and later developed 
by the patriotic syndicalists, that Italy as a whole is a proletarian nation 
and must wage a class struggle with its wealthy neighbors, might be 
regarded as a sufficient answer, so long as socialist theory was generally 
accepted, but now that the theory of the class struggle has been dis- 
carded some new ideology must be found. 

I might give an example, which though trifling in itself is symptomatic 

Rossoni : Idee ddla rkostrudom^ p. 62. 

Antonio Toniolo: In Vita ^ptembcr 192^, p. On Tunis s«te also 

Michels: Sozialismus und Faszumm^ pp. 130-^133 > Cippico: Italy, pp. 58-625 and 
F. N. Massuero: Ombre e lud d$ due contmmtL Milan, Alpes, 1926. 



38 INTERNATIONAL MORALITY 

of the intellectual situation. In November 1926 the Critica Fasctsta, 
which is solicitous for the “ cultural ” enhancement of fascism, printed 
an article (incidentally by a French author) outlining very frankly the 
way in which Italy had been cheated out of colonial expansion since the 
war by her allies and concluding that either France and England in a 
fit of unheard-of generosity would give Italy and Germany a few 
colonies, or else there would “ inevitably be war at a day less distant 
than might be supposed.” The editors in a note agree in general with 
these conclusions but take the author to task for his “ historical materi- 
alism, now passe ” and say: “ We too think that (unless there is a radical 
revision of mandates) no one can prevent the inevitable. But do not 
forget that if this should be the result of an excessive pressure on the 
economic factors necessary to the life of a great nation in its develop- 
ment, it would be reinforced by those moral elements from which all 
wars and all victories spring, and which no one likes to admit, perhaps 
in order to avoid blushing.” 

This points to the need of an unblushing fascist morality in inter- 
national relations, which, though in harmony with material facts, 
raises these to a higher, spiritual level, and transforms economic exi- 
gencies into moral rights and duties. The beginnings of such a doctrine 
in a more or less systematic form may be found in Luigi Valli’s II 
diritto in popoli alia terra (Milan, Alpes, 1926). Here the theory is 
developed that the need of land has always been one of the most funda- 
mental factors in governing the actual relations between nations, that 
In the face of it all the traditional principles of Grotius, Rousseau or 
Wilson have crumbled, that its power might as well be frankly recog- 
nized and that in place of the ever-violated immutable rights of the past, 
the absolute right of peoples to land must be recognized. Such a princi- 
ple, though absolute, is not abstract, for it cannot be applied once and 
for all, but implies continuous readjustment in view of the continually 
changing “dynamic demographic” facts. It centers upon the living 
nations in their fluctuating needs and capacities, not upon their histori- 
cal claims or “ legitimate ” boundaries. 

It also oflfers a substitute for the ancient claim to imperium, now ana- 
chronistic, but nevertheless implied in the modern concepts of imperial- 
ism, expansion, etc. The traditional language of imperialism is a poor 
instrument for regulating modern demographic relationships, and merely 
serves to arouse the passions. Moral indignation against imperialism or 
moral elation over expansion leave the actual moral problems un- 
touched. The same thing applies to our moral judgments on war and 

^ Philippe de Zara: 11 nuovo asfetto della folitica coloniale italianay in 
Critica Fmcistay November i, 19 25, p. 402. 



THE HEROIC PEOPLE 


39 

peace in general. What is needed, therefore, are moral categories that 
enable us to make distinctions between particular imperialisms and 
between particular wars, and that hence yield judgments on particular 
issues. 

The right of peoples to land is analogous and supplementary to the 
idea of the right of capital to markets. The latter notion will seem 
plausible to other nations, and for the same reason the former appears 
axiomatic to Italy. 

Facing these facts frankly, the author concludes, Italy must face war, 
especially now that growing immigration barriers are transforming the 
emigration problem into a political and military problem. The limited 
opportunities for emigration, for internal economic development and 
even for the practice of the immoral neo-Malthusian art are but pallia- 
tives and hopelessly inadequate to cope with the enormous ^^demo- 
graphic ” energy which at present characterizes the Italian people. 
There can be no peace for a people which irrepressibly overflows its 
narrow confines. 

Perhaps a word might be added at this point on the subject of the 
birth rate and birth control, not because it is a serious problem from an 
Italian point of view, but because foreigners continually hold it up to 
Italy as a panacea. As for deliberately diminishing the birth rate, quite 
apart from its immorality according to Catholic standards, such a policy 
would be politically ridiculous, a confession of national shame or at 
least of racial weariness. Apart from the fact that the Italians are 
proud of their highly civilized humanity,’^ writes a representative fascist, 

I know of no people, even decadent or barbarous, which would will- 
ingly accommodate itself to accepting the teachings of these apostles 
of infanticide.” 

There is some concern that the Italian birth rate may follow the ex- 
ample of the French and that Italy may become in the near future 
“physically decadent.” The pretended growth of celibacy and the 
recent tax on celibates aroused a little discussion on this subject; but 
in general the Italian people were quick to realize that the tax was a 
financial, not a eugenic measure. Mussolini, on the other hand, in his 
big speech before Parliament, May 26, 1927, attempted to arouse a 
general concern on the subject of population and birth rate. After giv- 
ing some of the vital statistics showing a falling oS in the birth rate in 
some of the industrial regions, he said: “Some unintelligent persons 
may say: there are already too many of us. Intelligent persons reply: 
there are too few of us. . . . Let us speak plainly. What are 40 million 
Italians to 90 million Germans and 200 million Slavs? Turn west- 

Cippico: Italy, p. 42. 



40 


THE HEROIC PEOPLE 


ward; What are 40 mnilon Italians to 40 million French plus their 90 
.million colonial inhabitants, or to 46 million English plus the 450 millions 
in their colonies? Gentlemen, if Italy wants to count for something, it 
must appear on the threshold of the second half of the century with a 
population of not less than 60 million inhabitants. ... If we fall off, 
Gentlemen, we can not make an empire, we shall become a colony.” 
Accordingly Mussolini recommended in addition to the bachelor^s tax 
a possible tax on childless marriages and above all an effort to re-ruralize 
Italy. For the high birth rates and the vigorous race are products of 
the soil! In commenting on this part of the speech, the newspaper 
rimpero, in its characteristic manner, outdid Mussolini, saying: “ Not to 
have children, when It Is not a misfortune, should be considered as the 
most serious and shameful of crimes. And it is not enough to stop after 
the first or second. Every couple should leave behind it its own equiva- 
lent plus Xy that is at least three or four children.” 

It is therefore obvious that far from considering relief by birth con- 
trol, the Italians are anxious to become still more numerous. Italy’s 
high birth rate and its consequent abundance of labor power is regarded 
as the most vital, precious and creative ” of its natural resources.” 
Italy is, as it always has been, heroic. It is prepared to suffer, to fight, 
to make whatever sacrifices may be necessary in order to make room for 
itself, but it can not surrender nor consciously curb its natural growth. 
Or, if some day it should, it will be because the young Italy of fascism 
will have passed and the inevitable doom which overtakes each empire 
in turn will put a political end to a nation already morally dead. 

Exuberant confidence in Italy’s future and youthful enthusiasm for 
conflict are certainly the most obvious traits of the fascist mind and 
imagination. And they represent a remarkable achievement. It should 
naturally have been the interventionists, the war party, on whom the 
blame for the disasters following the war should have been heaped and 
it was they who should have gone under in the wave of disillusion. In- 
stead they were able not only to throw off the responsibility for the 
disasters, but to renew the war In imagination. In 1920 a disgusted and 
wretched Italy never wanted to hear of war again. Today a “ new ” 
Italy believes confidently that the real war has but begun and is arming 
itself morally and economically for the greater struggle of the morrow. 
“ I regard Italy as In a permanent state of war,” said Mussolini, and 
the war bread which we have revived is our daily reminder and symbol.” 
Thus war weariness within a very few years was turned into a military 
morale in anticipation of future war and national struggle. “ The 
enemy ” is as conspicuous In Italy as ever, for the economic burden of 
the people has not been lightened; but it is no longer an internal enemy, 



THE HEROIC PEOPLE 


41 

an Italian bourgeoisie to be fought by strikes and riots; it Is an external 
plutocracy ” which the whole nation must face unitedly and with the 
weapons of production,” Hence the greater the economic pressure, 
the greater the patriotism! Here lies the stronghold of the fascist 
philosophy. 

But it must be remembered that it is of the fascist Imagination that 
we are speaking, not of the fascist government. In practice, of course, 
the government must be much less boisterous, more circumspect than it 
is on paper. Fascist philosophy, or any other philosophy for that mat- 
ter, should be interpreted psycho-analytically not literally. The press, 
the parades and the other symptoms of gtomnezza are themselves 
“ equivalents for war,” In William James^ phrase, whether they are 
moral ” or not. The military spirit so recently reawakened in Italy 
is looked upon as a symptom of national recovery rather than as a 
source for future trouble. Hence there is no attempt to curb It. But 
instead the government has attempted to turn it into economic channels. 
The emphasis on the battle of the lira/^ the “ economic battle,” the 
battle of grain,” etc., is more than a metaphor. It Is a recognition by 
the government of the necessity of bending all of the country’s energies 
to economic conquests,” and of giving a productive form to the 
nation’s militant enthusiasm. The continued menacing of France and 
Jugoslavia in particular and of the plutocratic nations in general, which 
the government encourages in the press and on the platform, is probably 
intended partly as a safety valve, partly as a threat to force concessions, 
and is not to be taken literally as an open challenge to war. How long 
and how far the government can safely play with this fire of the imagin- 
ation remains to be seen. The gospel of discipline, which is still being 
preached daily and primarily for the benefit of the militant fasci them- 
selves, may find Itself powerless in a crisis, and the diplomacy of the 
government may kindle a conflagration which it can not control. Fas- 
cism overthrew one government and it may overthrow another. On the 
other hand, it is by no means impossible that the present diplomacy may 
lead to fortunate alliances and successful wars and that Rome in a not 
distant future may once more feel the actual burden of an empire which 
it now enjoys in imagination. 



CHAPTER II 


REVOLUTIONS 
I. Squadrism 

Long after the war was over there were still battles In Italy between 
interventionists and neutralists. Not only were the same men Involved 
in these conflicts before and after the war, but the issues apparently 
remained unchanged. Fascism has rightly been called a post-war 
interventionism. 

But originally, strictly speaking, there were many fascisms, each 
springing spontaneously from local causes and each local situation 
having its own peculiarities. The earliest symptoms of the movement 
were agrarian and arose out of the unique economic and political situ- 
ation of the lower valley of the Po. This valley is the most fertile and 
wealthy agricultural district of Italy, but it was made so by the con- 
certed efforts of generations of men and by the investment of huge capi- 
tal, both by individuals and by the state. Therefore agriculture in this 
region has assumed an almost purely industrial form; great financial 
interests control vast areas and these are worked to a large extent by day 
laborers (braccianti) whose lot is little different from that of industrial 
workers. The recent development of the sugar-beet and similar agri- 
cultural industries has but accentuated this economic characteristic of 
the region. Naturally this was fertile ground for socialism. And so it 
happened that while Italy was fighting the war, the local administration 
of most of Romagna and Emilia was in the hands of socialists. Bologna, 
for example, had a socialist government steadily from 1914 to 1920. 
Nor was this local socialism of the bourgeois type that characterized 
Italian and parliamentary socialism. Especially during the war, when 
labor was comparatively scarce and conditions in general were favor- 
able, the labor bosses, indirectly through the municipal administrations 
and directly through the Chambers of Labor and the so-called “ Red 
Leagues,” were able to establish an absolute dictatorship. They par- 
celled out laborers as they pleased, forcing landowners to pay their 
wages whether they needed them or not. They controlled the sell- 



AFTER^MATH OF THE WAR 


43 

Ing and renting of land. They frequently dictated the crops to be 
raised and of course they determined labor conditions. Any laborer 
who tried to remain independent of the leagues, or any farmer who 
hired non-union labor, was boycotted (that is, he and his family could 
buy nothing of any sort anywhere, frequently not even medical service, 
or burial). Tenant farmers were subjected to all sorts of restrictions 
and inconveniences to force them into becoming laborers on the wage 
basis. Production was cut down to the point where it yielded the 
maximum return per labor hour, and frequently whole crops were al- 
lowed to rot on account of strikes or boycotts. In the cities similar 
conditions prevailed, though the dictatorship could not be carried to 
such lengths. 

After the war the situation became rapidly worse. It became prac- 
tically impossible to find work for all the returned soldiers, even by 
imposing them forcibly on employers.^’ With inflation and rising 
prices there was a continual demand for increases In wages, and the 
masses stood by the leagues to the limit, believing them to be their 
only refuge against starvation. Either Red or Starve ” was their 
argument. When the economic situation became unbearable, the labor 
leaders fanned the flame of revolt to white heat and their tactics became 
more violent. The revolution was preached as the only hope of salva- 
tion, and with the growing chaos it was generally believed to be immi- 
nent. The worse, the better ” was the general cry. Several times 
during the period between August 1919 and December 1920, a date was 
set for the grand event, which when the time came proved to be more 
a riot than a revolution. All seemed to expect that the universal despair 
would create a revolution by spontaneous combustion. Meanwhile 
they vented their wrath on two chief enemies, patriots and non-union 
men. 

As wages kept soaring, the temptation to hire non-union labor in- 
creased, and as unemployment increased, the opportunities for getting 
non-union labor increased also. Of the incidents which now occurred 
no adequate account can be given here. One typical case must suffice. 
On a Sunday in the summer of 1919 a group of independent threshers set 
up their machine in the square of the little town of Medicina. Antici- 
pating trouble they had gone to the league headquarters several times 
previously and had been assured that they would not be molested. 
Next morning shortly after they had begun work, they were attacked 
by a band of peasants led by the brother of the head of the league. 
Shots were fired from behind walls. The foreman of the threshers was 
killed, his body riddled with bullets, his purse stolen, and his wife 
dragged to the scene and threatened with similar treatment. Most of 



44 VIOLENT DEFENSE 

the other threshers were wounded. At Bazzano, Molinella and other 
towns similar incidents took place. Though the violence was worst 
around Modena, Ferrara and Bologna, it was bad throughout Romagna, 
Emilia and Tuscany and in the big agricultural establishments in the 
southern province of Puglia. In the circumstances landholders, tenants 
and independent laborers naturally looked about for defense. 

For such conditions the socialist masses naturally blamed the war. 
Even during the war the local socialist administrations had opposed 
national policy to an extent which probably no other government would 
have tolerated The war was openly condemned. Russian bolshevists 
were entertained like heroes, immediate peace was urged, and in general 
municipalities constituted an “ anti-state within the state.^’ After the 
war the veterans were publicly abused and insulted, often even beaten 
up or stabbed, the red flag was commonly displayed in place of the 
national tri-color and all men in uniform, police as well as soldiers, were 
regarded as assassins hired by the bourgeoisie. Not infrequently from 
the windows and doorways of their houses women would throw bottles, 
pans, dishwater, anything at soldiers as they passed by in the streets. 
Trolley cars had a habit of refusing to go when a man in uniform got on. 
Monuments to fallen soldiers were destroyed and even military funeral 
processions were occasionally attacked. Memorial celebrations were 
particularly offensive. As for the ambitious patriotism of d^Annunzio 
and the nationalists, it Vas regarded as worse than criminal. 

The first sign of resistance to this bolshevism came during the 
war. After the defeat of Caporetto, when defeatism ’’ was spreading 
rapidly among the masses, a parliamentary fascia di resistenza was 
formed, being a group of deputies from several parties, organized for 
national defense. Patriotic clubs then sprang up In great number. In 
Bologna, for example, the nationalists organized the Pro Patria and in 
1918 the more democratic parties, headed by the republicans, organized 
a rival fascia democratico di resistenza. Then came the arditi, armed 
squads of young nationalists and combatants, who after the war 
continued their military organization and were ready for any kind of 
patriotic service. It was the arditi who first wore the black shirts and 
carried the black banner, and who furnished d’Annunzio with his 
volunteers for Flume. A little later the nationalist leader, Paolucci, or- 
ganized the Sempra Pronti, or camicie azzure, militiamen of the Nation- 
alist Party, who wore blue shirt uniforms, and who regard themselves as 
among the pioneers and the aristocrats of the whole movement. The 
liberals organized squads of ^^grey shirts.” The Association of Vet- 
erans was naturally a powerful influence, though on the whole the com- 
batants were more interested In getting jobs for each other and in caring 



REDS VERSUS BLACKS 


45 

for their crippled than in patriotic demonstrations. They had more a 
business than a sentimental interest in fascism. It was their younger 
brothers in the universities and offices who made most of the noise. 
Strongly attracted by the shirts, the banners, the parades and other 
rites and ceremonies, and filled with the patriotic idealism inspired by 
the war, they organized in large numbers and were the first to descend 
into the piazza,^ as the technical phrase goes, singing patriotic hymns, 
flying the national colors and carrying guns and clubs. 

These blacks and blues were met by the “ red guards ” and later by 
the arditi del popolo, who resorted to the same tactics, sang the bandiera 
rossa song, flew the red flag, shouted for Russia and the Revolution, and 
occasionally threw bombs for it. The piazza became a battle ground. 
The general discontent found expression in organized combat, for the 
masses now had a visible object of attack and an organized enemy, 
on whom to vent their wrath. The parades and demonstrations 
usually ended up in general beatings, clubs being used freely and 
occasional shots being fired. On the whole, however, it must be said 
that these “ bloody battles ” and massacres ” of which the current 
literature is full, really turn out on close examination to be nine tenths 
noise. 

In the cities, besides the “ parade fights ” of which we have spoken, 
and the reprisals and feuds which grew out of them, violence most fre- 
quently was caused by strikes. These increased rapidly both in number 
and violence. During the metal industry strikes in Turin, for example, 
a student, Sonnino, and a jailor, Scimola, were condemned by a com- 
munist military tribunal for opposing the strikers. The workers 
wanted them thrown Into the furnaces, but these had gone out on account 
of the strike, so they were shot instead. 

On both sides fighting was indulged in much more freely than mere 
utilitarian motives would have called for. Both sides deliberately out- 
raged each other’s sentiments. The fascisti made it a practice to dis- 
play fanatic patriotism, apparently for no other reason than to anger 
the communists; and the latter, in turn, fanatically persecuted soldiers 
and patriots to the ultimate undoing of their economic tactics. The 
political leaders on both sides were unable to stop the conflagration 
at the time when they realized that it no longer served any practical 
purpose. The worst violence ^ame after the worst communism, when 
both sides were in a rage of fear and anger. They were literally arditi. 
They killed their enemies and suffered ‘^martyrdom” with true re- 
ligious fervor. Though the crisis no doubt was in its causes and origins 
economic, the struggle soon assumed a character which no economic 
interpretation could possibly explain. 



46 GOVERNMENT NEUTRALITY 

Economic motives were more obvious, however, in the bloody and 
businesslike punitive expeditions into the countrysides. These were 
raids, mostly at night, by automobile loads of armed men coming out 
from the cities into the villages where the reds were intrenched, where 
they had used violence against some landlord or free laborers, or in 
general where the reds had particularly strong “ nests.” _ In such raids 
there was always a generous amount of shooting on both sides, frequently 
bombs were thrown, houses burnt, especially labor headquarters, result- 
ing usually in the loss of several lives and the terrorization of a whole 
countryside. These expeditions were not infrequently financed by 
rich agrarians, who used them to defend their own interests, but their 
members who actually did the fighting were on the whole fairly disin- 
terested, bonafide ex-combatants or would-be combatants, who par- 
ticipated either out of patriotic motives or for the sheer excitement of 

the thing. _ . 

Squadrism was conunon in all the red provinces, Venetia, Ro- 
magna, Emilia, Lombardy, Piedmont, Tuscany, Umbria, the Marches 
and Puglia. In these provinces violence was practically unrestrained on 
both sides, for the police were controlled by rival groups of politicians 
and were helpless to intervene. When the reds made a raid, the local 
authorities kept the police at home and when the fascisti made a raid 
the national government ordered the police to maintain a benevolent 
neutrality. But even when the police did intervene, they often merely 
added to the violence, for they were seldom strong enough or energetic 
enough to dominate the situation. Fascisti were arrested and jailed by 
the dozen, but as soon as they were freed they resumed their activities. 
Nitti, who headed the government up to September 1920, adopted a 
laissez faire attitude both out of principle and policy; then Giolitti, after 
the local power of the revolutionists had been checked, tried to reassert 
government authority, but in practice this meant that the police merely 
supported the fascisti. 

The central fact of the whole movement was that the government, 
either purposely or through weakness, had adopted a policy of laissez 
faire in the face of the economic disturbances and that as they became 
increasingly violent the government could not intervene in any clear and 
consistent manner. In other , words, the government practically ab- 
dicated, and let private individuals take the initiative in solving the 
problem. Naturally army officers, police officers, and in general young 
men with a military training were the first to take a hand, fascisti as 
well as others, and the government morally supported whichever side 
seemed to serve its interests in particular cases. This is the basis for 
the fascisti’s, contention that they did not destroy public order nor 



BOLOGNA 


47 

overthrow the state, but that the state itself resigned its functions, — 
its executive and police functions in 1919-20 and its legislative functions 
in 1922. 

IL Local Color 

These were the general causes and characteristics of squadrlsm, but 
the movement had significantly diverse forms in different regions of 
the country. In Romagna, for instance, especially in the smaller centers 
like Mussolini’s home town, Forli, political life even before the war 
centered on the struggle between republicans and socialists, who were re- 
spectively the bourgeois and the proletarian revolutionists. Consequently 
after the war, when socialism became violent, it was but natural that 
the republicans should give battle. In these regions, as elsewhere too 
for that matter, especially in Tuscany and the Abruzzi, we find many 
republican fascisti, and some of the early fasci were explicitly republi- 
can organizations. This accounts in part for the fact that Mussolini 
seemed to take for granted that when he began fighting socialists he 
would have to turn republican. 

In Bologna the nationalists maintained their preponderance and gave 
the movement a definitely reactionary character. They were shocked 
at the war conduct of the socialists and tried to combat the local 
indifference or even hostility to the aggressive foreign policy, to which 
the nationalists were primarily devoted. They felt more than justified 
In trying to overthrow what they regarded as a treasonable anti-state ” 
within the state. But there were local issues as well. In Bologna, 
Reggio-Emilla and neighboring cities the socialist cooperatives had 
established practical monopolies In the business of the cities, which 
threatened to ruin private enterprises and which were almost as op- 
pressive as the labor leagues were in agriculture. Fascism’s strength 
therefore lay in the lower middle classes, merchants, whose economic 
position was exceedingly precarious and whose sentiments were out- 
raged, intellectuals, students and small shopkeepers, but it received 
both moral and financial support from the big commercial and agrarian 
corporations, whose private interests dominated the economic life of 
the whole region and who were most seriously menaced by the peasants’ 
revolt. The struggle in Bologna came to a dramatic culmination on 
November 21, 1920. In the local elections of October the socialists 
had won by a narrow margin. Whereupon certain nationalist and vet- 
erans’ organs announced that they would not permit the new adminis- 
tration to function. The fascisti had threatened trouble if the red flag 
instead of the tri-color were displayed from the balcony of the city 
hall, but they were promised by the authorities that the tri-color would 



FERRARA 


be displayed as legally prescribed. Nevertheless the fascisti posted 
threatening signs on the day before the opening of the New Municipal 
Council, and advised women and children to stay away from the piazza. 
The socialists, badly scared, came armed with pistols and hand grenades. 
Both sides staged demonstrations in the piazza, and both tri-color and 
red flags were to be seen on the balcony. A few shots were fired and, 
fearing an attack, some socialists threw grenades from the balcony into 
the crowd. In the Council Chamber the majority members at once 
inferred that an attack had begun and shouted at the minority, holding 
them responsible for a plot. At the same time four or five men, no 
one knows just who, started firing point blank at the five minority 
members. The ex-combatant, Giulio Giordani, was killed and two 
others wounded. The news of the event caused consternation all over 
Italy. Giordani immediately became a martyr and fascism for the first 
time moved into the foreground of the national stage. In Bologna the 
fascisti soon took reprisals, burned the Labor Hall, beat up some of 
the maximalist leaders and put an end to the socialist regime. 

At Ferrara and Parma events took a somewhat different turn. Here 
the movement was dominated by the middle class of the rural popula- 
tion, the tenants and small Independent farmers, whose interests were 
contrary to the politics both of the labor leaders and of the big landed 
aristocracy. Under the leadership of the squadrists in the cities they 
organized patriotic syndicates which, together with the usual squadrist 
violence, compelled the labor leagues on the one hand to recognize their 
independence and their tenant contracts, and on the other forced many 
of the big landowners to break up their holdings into small farms. In 
this way the labor dictatorship passed from the red leagues to the 
patriotic peasant syndicates. Ferrara is held up, especially by syndical- 
ists, as the outstanding proof that fascism is not merely a bourgeois 
reaction, nor a defense of private interests, but that it fought its own 
labor fights on occasion, developed its own labor movement, and when 
necessary conducted its own strikes. The spirit and aims of these syn- 
dicalistic fasci may be gathered from the following excerpt from a speech 
by Mussolini at Ferrara: 

“ . . . We fascisti have a great affection for the workers, for the labor- 
ing class. But our love, being pure, Is strictly disinterested and stead- 
fast. We love not by the burning of grains of incense, not by creating 
new idols and new majesties; we love by speaking plain truth always 
and everywhere. The more this truth may be unwelcome the more 
necessary it is to speak it openly. Very well then, if this Is our love for 
the affairs of labor, we fascisti, calumniated until yesterday, slandered 
until yesterday, have decided to continue the war in order to obtain 



CREMONA 


49 

the right of free circulation in Italy. We fascisti are the first not to 
yield to a base sort of demagogy, but to maintain that the rights of the 
laboring class of the nation are sacred and that the rights of those who 
cultivate the soil are all the more sacred. And in this connection I am 
glad to applaud heartily the fascisti of Ferrara who by deeds and not 
by the foolish prattle of politicians have begun that agrarian rev- 
olution which gradually, without epileptic fits, ought to give the 
peasants the definite possession of the soil. I give my hearty encour- 
agement to the fascisti of Ferrara to continue in this direction and to 
place themselves in the vanguard of the agrarian fascist movement 
of the whole of Italy. How can they say that we are sold out to the 
bourgeoisie, to capitalism, and to the government? Our adversaries 
now no longer dare maintain this accusation; it is too ribald and 
ridiculous.” 

At Cremona a type of local control was established very early, which 
since then has come to be called " rtj^sm ” (" ras ” * an Ethiopian 
chieftain). Roberto Farinacci, a railroad worker and socialist politi- 
cian under Bissolati, and a telegraph operator during the war^ suc- 
ceeded after the war in becoming a prominent labor leader, establishing 
him&elf as absolute dictator, ras^ or boss of Cremona and its environ- 
ment. The red leagues ” of the communists had been early sup- 
planted by the white leagues” of the Popular Party, organized by 
the Catholic deputy Miglioli. These enjoyed much the same monopoly 
here that the reds still enj’oyed lower down the valley, and by their 
oppressive tactics made themselves just as obnoxious. The socialists 
under Bissolati and the anti-clericals in general combined against them, 
and out of this combination grew the fasci when the fight became violent. 
This circumstance made Cremona fascism retain certain proletarian 
and socialist aspects without being bolshevist ” or unpatriotic. Fari- 
nacci and his squads completely destroyed the power of the white 
leagues, and by an Intelligent use of his own resources he soon made 
himself a very popular dictator, enjoying the unquestioning loyalty 
of the majority and the well-grounded fear of the remainder. He took 
orders from no one and served no one’s private Interests slavishly. 
Later on, for example, when a fascist minister tried to turn over the 
railroads of Farinacci’s province to a private concern, he opposed It 
and had the contract rescinded. Farinacci attained an immense pres- 
tige natiortally as well as locally and was rivalled in the popular imagina- 
tiem only by Mussolini. He is usually held up as the leader and model 
of the squadrlst and "intransigent” type of fascist. His brand of 
fascism has its own peculiar characteristics. It is not so anti-socialist 
as the nationalist wing and certainly less of a middle class affair. Then 



50 VENETIA 

too it is, or was, violently anti-clerical and positivistic and affiliated with 
the Masonic Order. Of his activities as National Secretary of the Fas- 
cist Party, we shall speak later. 

In Venetia, and especially in the newly “redeemed’’ territories, 
fascism had a very special function. In Trieste early in 1919? 
initiative of Captain Francesco Giunta of Florence and Professor 
Ruggero Conforto, a fdscio was founded to combat the Slav minorities 
who were beginning to organize. Almost immediately on its founda- 
tion it attacked the Sedi RiuTiite^ a Slav headquarters, and the Balkan^ 
the headquarters of the Slav communists. And ever after, Trieste re- 
mained one of the centers of violence. For similar functions a fascia 
was founded at Bolzano. The German majority in that region was 
vigorously combated. On April 24, 1921, a German parade was broken 
up by fascisti and In October 1922 a thoroughgoing attack was launched 
on the city administration without any government interference. The 
German mayor was forced to resign, the best schoolhouse in town 
turned over to Italians, German signs pulled down, and German law 
and language forbidden wherever possible and in general a violent 
effort was made at Italianization. 

In Florence (and Pisa) fascism was predominantly “ cultural ” and 
found its strength in literary and university circles. It grew out -of the 
activities of those futurists, idealists, anti-Teutonic intellectuals, etc., 
groups who had been leaders among the interventionists. But beside 
this “ high-brow group, and occasionally in opposition to it, grew up a 
squadrist group of ex-soldiers, who made Florence one of the worst 
centers of violence. Here again the immediate cause of the violence 
was agrarian. A general revolt broke out among Tuscan peasants 
against a growing tenant system (metayage), which was threatening a 
general revival of feudal tenure and big estates, to the undoing of the 
socialist labor organizations. 

Early in 1919 a Florentine lawyer named Terzaghi and a number of 
veterans, among them Amerigo Dumini and Umberto Banchelli, formed 
the Alliance for Civic Defense. In a very short time this group col- 
lected about a million lire from the frightened bourgeoisie. Part of 
the money was used to fight the revolting peasants and intimidate the 
city comniunists, but most of it went no one knows where. In the fall 
the leaders of the Civic Alliance transformed it into a political body 
and set up candidates for the elections. The squadrists became dis- 
gusted with such tactics and split off. 

A famous incident of Florentine fascism was the “ martyrdom ’’ of 
Giovanni Berta. His father owned a large factory and the workers had 
gone on strike. Unable to get all their demands, though some conces- 



FLORENCE 


51 


sions were made, some workers, men and women, one morning waylaid 
their employer’s eighteen-year-old son on the iron bridge, as he was on 
his way to the factory. They beat him up and threw him overboard. 
He tried to save himself by clinging to the bridge and yelling “ Mamma,” 
whereupon they cut off his hands and he dropped into the river. The 
father then closed up the factory and retired from business, and several 
hundred workers were out of employment. 

For a brief period the jascio tried to deal with the economic prob- 
lem of the city. A detachment of squadrists under Banchelli was ordered 
to see that prices came down. They gave the merchants a few days 
within which to lower prices. After the time was up, beatings began. 
Recalcitrant shopkeepers were first beaten and then brought to “ trial.” 
After repeated offense, their shops were padlocked and a sign hung up 
“ Closed for continued robbery.” Next these squadrists planted the 
tri-color among the vegetables ” in the market and tried to control 
the prices asked by the peasant vendors. But the political fascisti of 
the town soon put an end to all this for, as Banchelli says, ^ they were 
caught between the duty of being the friend of the people and the 
pitiful tears of the merchants, business men and industrialists from 
whom they had received money.” In other ways too the jascio tried to 
gain the favor of the working classes, but all attempts failed, because 
of the too conspicuous sons of rich merchants and landed proprietors, 
who had joined. 

The leader of the fighters and perhaps the most notorious of all 
fascist squadrists was Amerigo Dumlnl. He and his squads not only 
“ filled Florence with the smell of powder,” but also went on numerous 
punitive expeditions to most of the neighboring villages, and then all 
over Tuscany, Umbria, as far north as Sarzana (above Pisa) and 
as far south as Perugia. The Sarzana debacle in July 1921 
proved the culmination of the activities of this group of squadrists. A 
large band made a night march on that town with the purpose of 
freeing some of their prisoners and in general of subduing the peasants 
in the neighborhood. Hardly past the railroad station they were met 
by the police, who fired on them, causing a few casualties and sending 
the rest pell-mell over the countryside, where many of them fell into 
the hands of ambushed peasants. Reprisals for this defeat were taken 
a few nights later at the neighboring village of Roccastrada.^ 

^ An entertaining account of this expedition, as well as of the history 
of the Florentine fascio from a squadrist’s point of view, is to be found in Umberto 
Banchelli: Le Memories di un fascista jpjp— 1922, selections of which are given in 
Appendix No. 13. Bianchelli was expelled from the fascist party for conduct 
unbecoming a fascist, and was recently involved in a petty straw hat business 



52 PERUGIA 

The case of Siena is worth mentioning chiefly because here the 
municipal administration had been wrested from the socialists, but 
the countryside and the deputies to Parliament were still red. Other- 
wise the conflicts were much like those of Bolzano and Florence. Ex- 
soldiers and ex-republicans took a prominent part in the early exploits. 
The Casa del popolo/' socialist headquarters, was one of the first 
things to be destroyed. Then came frequent expeditions breaking up 
peasant strikes, defending peasants who harvested against orders from 
headquarters, avenging the “ martyrs/' etc.* 

In Umbria, with Perugia as Its center, we find another variation of the 
same theme. In this province of small farms there had been very little 
extreme labor organization except around Terni, where the big hydro- 
electric plant was a labor center. Politics had always been in the hands 
of the middle class liberal party. During the war, however, a number 
of war industries arose in Perugia, and these closed down suddenly at 
the same time that thousands of soldiers were returning home, and 
at the time of the general economic depression following the war. As a 
result the election in the fall of 1919 suddenly put not only Perugia 
but over fifty other Umbrian towns in the hands of the maximalists. 
The middle classes were paralyzed. In this situation a young liberal, a 
biologist just returned from Red Cross service, Alfredo Misuri, at- 
tempted to rally whatever forces he could to “ save the country.^' Be- 
fore the elections he tried to organize an anti-bolshevist committee, but 
he failed completely. After the elections all middle class political action 
seemed futile. Consequently he and his friends organized a Unione 
Sindacale del Lavoro, dedicated to the representation of specific eco- 
nomic interests (categories) in place of that of classes, keeping in view 
exclusively their economic and social functions; and dedicated to the 
union of such forces into a fascio with the aim of promoting a more rapid 
and peaceful social evolution by means of the creation of a potent 
weapon of defense for the rights of the various categories." ^ Camou- 
flaged in this way as a labor organization for strictly non-political pur- 
poses, this fascio of “ all the good citizens " made some headway. I 
quote from Misuri's own account of what followed: ^^The syndical 

swindle in South America (for which he is now, I think, in jail). Dumini, after 
having served his brief sentence for the Matteotti murder, was finally sentenced to 
five years imprisonment for an ‘‘offense against the President of the Council.^* 
He is said to have remarked, “ If they give me five years, they ought to give the 
President of the Council twenty.” 

* An account of these activities can be found in Giorgio A. Chiurco: Fasdsmo 
Ssmsf, Siena 1923. 

* Appendix No. i in Misuri: Rwolla Morale, 



PERUGIA 


53 

organization of the middle classes was as slow and difficult as ever; an 
organization of the lower classes was not even thinkable, given the in- 
fatuated hostility which dominated all of them. We kept on agitating, 
nevertheless, getting a little inspiration for our ideas from the fascist 
movement already begun at Milan and adapting It to local circum- 
stances, but not being able to realize it in Umbria, both because the 
political temperament of certain members did not permit it, and because 
the local situation was not yet ripe for it. While we were making these 
first efforts, it should be said for the sake of the truth, there was not even 
a trace visible of the then shining lights of official fascism, and this 
lasted for over a year longer. 

. Thus we came to the administrative elections of 1920, which 
we confronted by uniting into a bloc, the Unione Sindacale del Lavoro, 
the veterans, the liberals" and the economic associations. I succeeded in 
being elected at the head of the minority list, falling only 56 votes be- 
hind the socialist mayor and obtaining a majority in the city itself. . . . 

'‘We all felt that a political program was necessary to make our 
activities more effective. . . . Accordingly I constructed a political pro- 
gram to which most of the groups allied during the municipal cam- 
paign adhered, and we called it Democrazia Sociale, , . . But this new 
political body, for several reasons, failed to meet with the success it 
deserved. Events were moving on. . . . Among us too in the industrial 
establishments the ^ red guards ^ were being formed; the atmosphere 
became electrified when the news came to us from the northern prov- 
inces of the first deeds of the fascisti and arditi at Milan, then of the 
massacre at the City Hall of Bologna, and still later of the battle of 
San Frediano at Florence. Then the period of genuine conspiracy began 
in earnest. Subscription lists for the Popolo d'ltalia were drawn up; 
the first group of volunteers began to circulate to get members for 
a fas do di combattimento. For now political formulas and campaigns 
no longer sufficed; it was necessary to identify ourselves with the move- 
ment which was coming to the rescue of the nation. In January 1921 
Captain Zamboni of the fascio of Florence came to Perugia, and a score 
or two of us founded the Perugian fasdo di combattimento. The day 
following the foundation of the fasdo there came a collision between 
several young fascist students and the red guard. A student named 
Sanvico was seriously wounded. The tension grew continually until 
March 1921, when one evening one of our meetings was broken up by 
the report of firearms in the street. The socialist-communists had 
put an end to the life of a student named Romeo. We rushed into the 
streets with revolvers in hand and began an irresistible action which 
lasted for five days in Perugia, with the help of the Florentine squad, 



THE SOUTH 


54 

and which spread in a few weeks^ time over the whole region. Soon the 
red flags began to disappear from public buildings and, with the violence 
which was absolutely indispensable, liberty for all was established.’’ ^ 
In the south, except for the province of Puglia which we have already 
mentioned, fascism was practically unknown before the March on 
Rome. Political life and labor organization are both very backward 
in these parts, and since neither nationalism nor anti-nationalism has 
made much headway, naturally neither has fascism. The south was 
dominated by the Catholic Popular Party Immediately upon its forma- 
tion in 1919, and labor began to be organized into “ white syndicates,” 
After the March on Rome these organizations were gradually trans- 
ferred by means of political pressure to the fascist syndicates. What 
conflict there was in the south was an extension of the conflict which 
arose in certain northern sections, where the white syndicates were 
fought by the fascisti, and in general was the result of the attempts of 
the Masonic forces to utilize the fascisti in promoting anti-clericalism. 
The most serious fights in the south, however, were between nationalists 
and fascists. Many young men of the middle classes, on returning 
from the war, had organized nationalist fasci^ which were usually of 
the most reactionary temper and served the interests of the big land- 
holders. Later, when the fascisti came In and tried to organize similar 
fasci, personal rivalries ensued and the fascisti made the reactionary 
character of the nationalists a pretext for appealing to the masses In 
their attempt to dislodge them. These fights, however, were not wide- 
spread nor of long duration and in the south as well as the north 
nationalism and fascism have fused. 

Into minor local differences of fascism we can not enter here. In 
some cases fascism was supported by the Catholics (for example, by 
Count Grosoli) ; in others it was under Masonic and anti-clerical in- 
fluence (as for example, in Rome where General Capello, member of 
the Council of the Grand Orient, and now sentenced for complicity 
in an attempt on Mussolini’s life, reviewed the first fascist parade, him- 
self in fascist uniform). Some fascisti were violently anti-d’Annunzio, 
and others just as violently pro-d’Annunzio. Fascism, as Zibordi said, 
took on local color ” almost immediately and has only recently achieved 
a fair degree of national homogeneity. 


IIL Milan Facism 

After these scattered examples of fascist origins and motives we must 
now turn back to headquarters, that is, to Milan, and follow the move- 
ments of this particular fascio in more detail. For though fascism did 
^ Misuri: RivoUa Morale ^ pp. 18-22 fassim. 



FUTURIST FASCI 


ss 

not originate in Milan nor spring from the brain of one man, the Milan 
fascio headed by Mussolini undoubtedly first gave the movements a 
formal organization and a national scope. 

In Milan, Turin and Florence, the intellectuals and students played 
an exceptionally prominent part. Middle class youths had left their 
studies or professional practices and gone to war. More than the 
laborers, they felt on returning from the front a claim for recognition 
and honor to say nothing of employment. Most of them were officers 
in the army and expected to be leaders in civil life. Instead, 
they found it difficult to make up their losses, to pass their examina- 
tions, to find employment, and to enter into normal social rela- 
tions. Within a short time the inflation had reduced their economic 
status below that of the laborers. Then came insult on injury. 
Instead of being treated as heroes they were persecuted as 
traitors. Consequently they were among the first to welcome the 
fascij not only as an employment but as an opportunity to defend 
their personal honor. In the fasci of the above-named cities these stu- 
dents, journalists, lawyers and intellectuals were prominent, if not 
predominant. 

A number of such radicals had already organized under the banner 
of futurism. Even before the end of the war, Marinetti, Settimelli and 
Carli had founded a paper in Rome, Roma Futurista. Mario Carli at 
Rome and Captain Vecchi at Milan succeeded in organizing the arditi 
into a national association and affiliating this with the futurist move- 
ment. Roma Futurista was to be the official organ of the arditi^ but 
shortly afterward Vecchi founded UArdito at Milan, which practically 
made the arditi independent of the futurist organizations, though in 
their personnel there was considerable overlapping. To give themselves 
a political organization, the futurists in 1918 formed several jasci politici 
futuristic which were to be the basis of a Futurist Party. These were 
especially strong at Rome, Florence and Milan. By February 1919 
there were about twenty such fasci- 

In the first number of Roma Futurista Settimelli wrote: Futurism, 
which until now has carried on primarily an artistic program, proposes 
to carry on a unified political activity in order to cooperate in solving 
the urgent national problems. . . . The prejudice for pedantic and 
quietistic seriousness imposed on old Italy by soft-headed professors, 
by anti-Italian priests and by Glolltti^s grafters tried to discredit the 
geniality of our daring youths and innovators. 

But the true Italy can not and will not remain, not even in part, 
in their incapable hands. The war has revealed the true Italian 
forces. They are young, violent, anti-traditional and -ultra-Italian 
forces.” 



56 AlUSSOLINI 1919 

This is a comparatively mild and restrained statement of futurist 
politics. On the whole this group was so violent, so revolutionary, so 
ridiculously enraged against everything that has a past, that it was 
taken even less seriously in politics than in art. It attracted attention, 
however, because it was so ridiculous and served as good advertising 
and campaign material. In fact many of the early fascist propagandists 
and organizers were futurists; among them. In addition to those already 
mentioned, Castelli, Freddi, Fabbri, Boizon, Bottai. (The two last 
named are now in the government.) 

The forty-five men whom Mussolini called together at Milan on 
March 23, 1919, and who constituted themselves the first fascio di 
combattiviento, were a very mixed lot. Many, but by no means all of 
them, were war veterans. A number of them were active arditi (e.g., 
Vecchi), there were a few Republicans, a few syndicalists and agita- 
tors (like Michele Blanchi), an army general, and a generous representa- 
tion of futurists. F. T. Marinetti, the national leader of the futurists, was 
there and fasci futuristi of various cities had sent representatives, among 
them Piero Boizon, Enrico Rocca, and Mario Carli. In general this 
fascio represented much the same lot who had formed the fasci d^azione 
rivoluzionaria in 1915, and its chief aim now was to defend the war 
against the rising tide of ^^neutralists,” against the “penitent Mag- 
dalenes,” as Mussolini called them.^ ^e of the distinguishing char- 
acteristics of the Milan fascio was that it wanted to be revolutionary, 
proletarian, a band of fighters for a new Italy, not merely defenders of 
the existing social order and vested interests In the face of bolshevisiru 
The “ combattimento ” was not meant against the threatened revolt 
tion but ^gain st the neutralism of the regime as well as of the com- 
munists. ^^mmotto was: “ Fight for the revolutionary fruits of a revo- 
lutionary w^ 3 /czjao was formed at the time when the Italian 
socialists voted to join the Russian Third International, and the prime 
fear of the fascists was not economic bolshevism, but Russian, inter- 
national anti-war bolshevism. 

Here it must be recalled that Mussolini had entered the war as a revo- 
lutionary socialist, and had suggested, though vaguely, that after the 
war, as a result of It, the proletariat would be able to carry out its 
longed-for revolution. He had still not quite forgotten this idea and 
though he had been cured of his romantic revolutionism, he said, by 
the lesson of the Russian revolution, and though he now saw that a 
genuine revolution can be achieved only by “gaining mastery over 
long-standing and complicated economic forces,” ® he still clung to his 
1917 formula of “giving a social content to the war,” “The war must 

® Pofolo PPltalla^ February 27, 1919. In Biutumay p. 245. 



MUSSOLINI 1919 57 

lead to the material and moral elevation of the masses, to a pro- 
found renewal of our national life.” ® Now that the material elevation 
of the masses ” was far from visible, he harped on the “ moral eleva- 
tion ” and to the hosts of the “ deluded proletariat ” and to the penitent 
Magdalenes ” he sang this heroic strain: 

From the point of view of social and economic renovation, the war 
has satisfied the most ardent hopes and the most far-reaching aspira- 
tions. The war has not driven the masses back Into the pre-hlstorlc 
darkness of their life before the war, but has called them with a loud 
voice to reassert themselves. It has broken their chains. It has given 
them an extraordinary vindication. A war of masses ended with the 
triumph of the masses. Numbers exalt the numbers who aspire to rule 
human society. The paradise dreamed of by the Bellamys of social- 
ism and relegated by them to the year 2000 has now been anticipated 
by a century. . . . What matters the immensity of the sacrifice 
in view of the wonderful possibilities of the immediate future? 
The centuries of celestial happiness which open up make us 
forget the four years of hell. The official socialists who foolishly op- 
posed the war must exalt it lyrically today. . . . Their Ideal is within 
reach. I repeat: the Ideal. Penitent Magdalenes of all sorts and de- 
scriptions, do not stop at those details which may offend your taste 
and your affections. Look at the grand total. This is not the time for 
repentance. I venture to say it is the time for continuing in the sin, 
to say nothing of not renouncing it.” ^ 

This rhapsody was obviously too ironic to be convincing and Musso- 
lini himself no doubt had misgivings. The idylls of pnmavera 
umana” which he set up after the victory, seemed strangely out of 
place, and it evidently took effort to sing them. He soon changed the 
tune a little as follows: 

We interventionists are the only ones in Italy who have a right to 
talk about revolutions. . . . We need not await the revolution, as does 
the crowd of Party members ; nor does the word frighten us, as it does 
those timid mediocre persons whose brains stopped working in 1914. 
We have already fought the revolution. In May 1915. 

“ The fasci di combattimento are revolutionary, for we take our de- 
parture from that May which was essentially and divinely revolution- 
ary, in so far as it destroyed a shameful situation in our internal politics 
and decided the outcome of the World War. That was the first episode 
of the Revolution. It was the beginning. The Revolution continued 
under the name of war for forty months. It is not yet over. It may 
® Pofolo March 1919. 

^ Pofolo ^ Italia^ March 5, 1919. In DiutimtOy pp. 247-252. 



58 THE PROGRAM OF 1919 

or may not take a dramatic, sensational course. It may proceed on a 
faster tempo. But it is continuing. . . . As to the means ? We have no 
formal principles (prejudiciali) , We accept whatever means may be- 
come necessary, the legal and the so-called illegal. A period Is opening in 
history which might be defined as that of mass politics or of demo- 
cratic hypertrophy. We can not run counter to this movement. We 
must head it toward political democracy and economic democracy. The 
former can lead the masses back to the state and the latter can con- 
ciliate capital and labor on the basis of their common ground, namely, 
maximum production. From all this travail will rise new values and 
new hierarchies.”® Formal principles are iron and tin fetters. We 
have neither republican nor monarchist principles, neither catholic nor 
anti-catholic, socialist nor anti-socialist. We are problemists, realists, 
realizers.” ® 

Nevertheless, when the time came, Mussolini saw fit to draw up a 
program or platform for the fascio, not a set of binding principles, he 
explained, but a program for immediate action. It was accepted by the 
iascio, published in the Popolo d’ltalia, and may be summarized as 
follows: 

1. Annexation of Flume and the whole of Dalmatia. 

2. Universal suffrage for men and women. 

3. Scfutin de liste and proportional representation. 

4. Political elections as soon as demobilization is completed. 

5. Eligible age for deputies to be reduced from 31 to 25 years. 

6. Deputies to be elected at the next elections to form a National 
Assembly. 

7. The National Assembly to sit for three years. 

8. The National Assembly to determine immediately a new form 
of government. 

9. The Senate to be abolished. 

^ 10. Economic councils with legislative powers to be elected by pro- 
fessional groups. 

11. Establishment of eight-hour day by law. 

12. Management of industries by those workers’ organizations which 
prove themselves capable of it, particularly the railroads by the rail- 
road workers. 

13. The formation of a national militia. 

14. The nationalization of munitions plants. 

15. A heavy capital levy. 

® Pofolo dUtalia^ March iS, 1919. ® Giomale dUtaUa^ March 19, 1919. 



THE PROGRAM OF 1919 59 

16. Confiscation of certain church properties and abolition of certain 
clerical privileges. 

17. A heavy inheritance tax. 

18. The seizure of 85 per cent of the war profits and revision of 
military contracts. 

That same evening at the celebration in the piazza, which has been 
called the Constituent Assembly of Fascism, the general formula was 
announced, ‘^cooperation in production; class struggle in distribu- 
tion,” and three fundamental “ declarations ” of policy were read and 
approved: 

(1) Recognition and honor to the veterans of the War and to the 
fallen heroes. 

(2) Acceptance of the League of Nations, opposition to all imperial- 
isms; annexation of Fiume and Dalmatia. 

(3) Sabotage of all neutralist candidates In the elections. 

Mussolini’s general scheme at that time seems to have been the 
institution of a sort of Producers’ Republic with a constitution mod- 
elled on the new German one. The syndicalist elements in it, the scheme 
for national economic councils, were suggested to him partly by Kurt 
Eisner’s German plan which Mussolini quoted word for word, partly by 
the fact that the patriotic Unione Italiana del Lavoro was holding its 
national congress at the time and Mussolini hoped to establish an 
alliance with it. 

His chief reliance, however, in the realization of such a program, 
was on the returned soldiers, the “proletariat of the trenches,” who 
immediately after demobilization would rally to a program which was 
both patriotic and revolutionary. He changed the heading on the 
Popolo d'ltalia from “ A Socialist Daily ” to “ A daily for fighters and 
producers.” In his speech at the first gathering in the piazza he ex- 
pressed himself as follows: “We must go out to meet the labor which 
is returning from the trenches; for it would be disgraceful and bolshevik 
to deny recognition to those who fought the war. We must accept 
the principles of the laboring classes. We are placing ourselves on the 
ground of national syndicalism and contrary to the interference of 
the state when the latter seeks to kill the process of wealth production. 
I have the impression that the actual regime in Italy is opening the way 
for its successor. During the war, we all felt the incapacity of those 
who were governing us and we know that we won only by virtue of 
the Italian people, not by any intelligence or capacity on the part of the 
administration. Given the chance for a new regime, we must not be 



6 o THE PROGRAM OF 1919 

faint-hearted. Therefore we are constituting the fasci, bodies capable 
of creative action and capable of going out Into the squares and crying: 
It is we who have the right to succeed this government, for it was we 
who pushed the country into the war and led It to victory. . . . From 
the next elections will come a national assembly which must determine 
the form of government of the Italian state. It will ask: Republic or 
Monarchy? and we, who have always had republican leanings, will 
then come forward and say: Republic.’^ 

On July 22, 1919, Mussolini made a campaign speech which clearly 
revealed his preoccupation with the fall elections. He outlined a de- 
tailed program constructed of planks in the platforms of the parties 
of the left, especially the Republican, which he expected would 
be a common denominator for the U. S. M., the fasci di 
combattimentOj the Veterans’ Association, the arditij the Union of 
Demobilized Soldiers, the Association of Volunteers, the Garibaldist 
Association, the Circolo Corridoni^ etc.” He suggested: 

1. Oppose the Socialist Party. 

2. Stop striking and produce. 

3. Financial provisions: (a) A loan of a million dollars, and (b) con- 
cessions In Asia Minor; both of these he expected Secretary Lansing to 
get for Italy in opposition to Clemenceau. 

4. Only Flume and the Dalmatian cities are possible annexations for 
the present and Secretary Lansing promises substitutes in the Medi- 
terranean for our sacrifices in Dalmatia.” 

5. Oppose a general strike under any conditions. 

6. Constructive ” measures, it matters little whether they be called 
revolution or reaction. My compass is : I favor whatever furthers the 
greatness of the Italian people.” 

7. No alliance with the Socialist Party. I deny the utility and the 
opportunity of any sort of collaboration with that party.” 

8. Revise the Versailles Treaty, but oppose the projected general 
strike of protest against the treaty. 

9. Syndical organization: 

(a) Absolute independence of all parties or sects. 

(b) Federalism and autonomy. 

(c) Reduction to a minimum of salaried officials. 

(d) Referendum on all issues. 

10. ^^The electoral reform will be passed, with scrutin de liste and 
proportional representation. This will obviously determine some great 
coalitions. One, a socialist-Leninist; another, a derico-popular; and a 

V. Discorsf, first edition, pp. 69-80, 



FACTORY OCCUPATION 


6i 


third, ourSj which might be called The Alliance of the Component of 
Forces ... a republican alliance or a concentration of the interven- 
tionist groups of the left.’^ On October ninth he made another cam- 
paign speech which was strongly republican.^^ 

The list of candidates set up at Milan for the election included Mus- 
solini, Marinetti (futurist), Podrecca (leading anti-clerical), Toscanini 
(the distinguished and popular musician), Bolzon (futurist), Macchi 
(an aviator and a futurist), several republicans and several syndicalists. 
During the campaign Mussolini, Marinetti, Vecchi, Bolzon and fifteen 
arditi were locked up for twenty-one days for leading armed bands 
against state authorities. Carli, to escape arrest, fled to Fiume and 
joined the arditi under d’Annunzio. 

These candidates and their program were ill-fated in practically all 
respects. They received but little support even among fascist^ and the 
events of the next few months made their program hopelessly obsolete. 
Its enthusiasm for democracy, which came largely from Versailles and 
the Wilsonian war propaganda, was soon buried under the revelation 
of what was actually going on at the Peace Conference. It was useless 
to talk of Dalmatia when the annexation even of Fiume seemed doubt- 
ful. The “ proletariat of the trenches ” joined the red guards ” in 
much greater numbers than they joined the fasci. The Unione Italiana 
del LavorOi to which Mussolini had made overtures, failed to get a 
foothold. The masses flocked Into the folds of the Socialist and Popular 
Party organizations. It soon began to look as though the revolution, 
far from being led by Mussolini, would take place in spite of him. The 
elections, which were to produce a grand coalition, gave Mussolini and 
Marinetti but a few thousand votes, scarcely worth counting, and the 
triumphant reds and “ whites ” were content to scoff at the “ political 
corpses ” of the fascisti 

For a while Mussolini thought he saw a ray of hope coming from an 
unexpected angle. In May 1919 the laborers in the metal works of 
Franchl-GregorinI at Dalmine near Bergamo felt the need of an in- 
crease in wages, as did everyone at the time. They feared to strike, 
for strikes, though expedient as political protests, were practically use- 
less as means of getting higher wages, especially at that time of depres- 
sion when surplus labor was plentiful and employers were already 
resorting to lockouts to get rid of labor. Influenced in part by the 
growing menace of lockouts and in part by the movement for workers’ 
factory control, which was at the time being urged among labor circles 
in the northern Industrial centers, these laborers hit upon the scheme 

V. Discorsij first edition, pp. 8 i~SS. Cited in part by Mussolini in Diutumay 
p. 336-7. 



62 FACTORY OCCUPATION 

of remaining in the factory night and day- Instead of stopping work, 
they '' camped ” on the job, refused to leave, and ran the factory with 
or against orders. To make their action still more Irreproachable they 
hoisted the national tri-color over the factory. The occupation ” was 
successful and the employers yielded in a few days. This appealed to 
Mussolini immensely and he gladly accepted the invitation to address 
the '' factory occupiers.^' He praised their “productive strike,” gave 
them his hearty support and claimed that they had shown the people 
how to free itself from the political game and had opened up the 
horizon for the future. 

The idea took hold rapidly and one factory after another was oc- 
cupied, culminating in September 1920 in the occupation of prac- 
tically all the metal works around Turin and Milan and of hundreds 
of others in all parts of Italy. Mussolini continued to support the 
workers. But when the red flag came to be hoisted more frequently 
than the tri-color, when the workers organized themselves into military 
“ red guards,” and when they threatened to put an end to private own- 
ership altogether, Mussolini was placed in a predicament. He favored 
the attack on the industrialists, but he had a horror of a red revolution. 
It all seemed to turn on the color of the flag hoisted. By September 1920 
it was clear that the movement had become the very essence of “ bol- 
shevism,” and the terror-stricken industrialists and middle classes did 
not hesitate to declare war on it. Outside Milan the fasci themselves 
were openly fighting it. Mussolini weakened gradually, fearing first that 
the workers would not prove competent to carry on production, then 
asserting that the movement was being led by subversive labor leaders 
against the interests of the Italian nation. He finally tried to inject the 
nationalistic and patriotic issue into what he had maintained was a 
purely economic experiment. On the whole, however, he gave it his 
moral support until the end, ridiculing the idea that it was bolshevism, 
and asserting that there was absolutely no relation between such experi- 
ments in workers’ democracy and the bolshevik tyranny in Russia. In 
fact, during this crisis, Mussolini and the Popolo d'ltalia were really pre- 
occupied with the Fiume excitement. In part, at least, his tactics seem to 
have been to try to divert attention from the internal and economic 
problems to that glorious revindication of national honor and prestige 
which the Fiume expedition signified to his mind. And he inclined 
strongly towards the contention of the nationalists, that all internal 
questions should be subordinated to a foreign policy and “ the superior 
interests of the nation as a whole.” 

Meanwhile the problem was being solved by others, or rather it 
solved itself. The workers carried on as long as they could with the 



FACTORY OCCUPATION 63 

funds and raw materials available, but found out that the banks would 
neither give them credit nor turn over the factory funds to them. They 
faced the same problem when they came to buy new materials. In 
short, they very soon absolutely stopped and after using up what was 
on hand they had to come to terms with their employers. In the mean- 
time the Giolitti government had intervened and finally succeeded in 
inducing the employers to accept a compromise whereby the factories 
were returned to their owners, factory committees with limited powers 
were established, and wages raised. Had not the government Inter- 
vened, and had not the great majority of the workers voted for the 
compromise, industrial labor organization would probably have been 
crushed completely. For the industrialists would certainly have done 
what some of them did do a year later, when the elections were favorable. 
The Fiat Company, for example, forced each employee to sign a state- 
ment saying that he did not and would not belong to any labor union 
whatsoever. As It was, the government kept out long enough to let 
the workers feel their failure, but not long enough to let the 
employers dictate. The net result was that the revolution was 
broken, and the Giolitti government came out of the fray with a feather 
in its cap. Mussolini himself could do little else than support the gov- 
ernment’s action, throwing in a little scolding, as was his custom, for all 
three parties, — the employers for their initial stubbornness, the work- 
ers for their dangerous approach to bolshevism, and the government 
for its lack of promptness and decision. 

The failure of the factory occupations really determined the fate of 
the revolution. Certainly fascism played no critical part in it one way 
or the other. The bulk of the squadrist-communist violence came 
after this event, and had an agrarian and not an Industrial setting. 
Nevertheless the factory occupation had an important bearing on the 
subsequent development of fascism. For though it settled the practical 
issue quite independently of fascism, and marked the turning of the 
tide against maximalism even among the socialists, it did not calm 
the mental and emotional state of either side. Both sides now resorted 
increasingly to violence; the socialists, because, defeated in economic 
strategy, they had no other recourse; the employers, because they were 
terror-stricken and feared ‘‘a return of the beast.” From now on the 
fasci had little trouble in collecting all the funds they needed. 

IV. War on Bolshevism 

Thus Mussolini’s political and economic program of 1919 fizzled out 
miserably, but fascist squadrism was becoming increasingly active and 



64 SOME BATTLES 

important. The Milan squad itself, a few weeks after its formation, 
went into action. On the occasion of a general strike, which had been 
declared because the government had prohibited a celebration in honor 
of Lenin, the fascisti on April 15, 1919, broke up a parade of 10,000 of 
the strikers. And in the afternoon, a number of them joined the arditi 
under Vecchi and destroyed the offices and printing plant of the Avdnti, 
not without bloodshed. This action was like a signal for similar enter- 
prises all over the country. Strikes were broken up, parades were turned 
into street battles, labor offices were sacked and burned, guns, clubs 
and castor oil were used freely. We have already given some account 
at the beginning of this chapter of the nature of the ensuing violence. 
A mere list of “ battles ’’ as they were announced in the press may give 
the reader some idea of their extent. 

1920, Sept. 12 — Conflicts in Turin, Como, Valdarno. 

23 — Fascisti destroy the Labor Hall of Pola. 

25 — End of factory occupation. 

Oct. II — Sonzini assassinated by communist jury. 

14 — Bloody incidents at Milan, Trieste, Brescia, Bologna. 
At Trieste the fascisti destroy the offices of the paper, 
Lavoratore. 

29 — Strike at Florence and conflicts between fascisti and 
socialists. 

Nov. 4 — Bloody conflicts at Verona, Bologna, Ancona, and 
Reggio Calabria between socialists and fascists. 
Bolshevik deputy, Scarabello, killed by a bomb he 
was carrying in a satchel. 

7 — Bloody conflicts at Florence, 

21 — Massacre at Bologna and murder of Giordani. 

Dec. 18 — Bloody riots of war cripples against Chamber of 
Deputies. Two deputies beaten at Bologna. So- 
cialist riots in Chamber of Deputies. 

20 — Bloody attack of socialists on fascisti at Ferrara. 

26 — State of siege in Trieste, when masses of fascisti are 

arrested. 

1921, Jan. I — ^ Bloody conflicts between fascisti and socialists at 

Correggio. 

3 — Bloody conflicts between fascisti and socialists at 
Fusignano. 

9 — Bloody conflicts between fascisti and socialists at 
Bologna. 

19 — Bloody conflicts between fascisti and socialists at 
Castellamare di Stabia. 



SOME BATTLES 


65 


22 — Socialist aggression against fascisti at Modena. 

24 — Ditto. In reprisal fascisti burn Labor Halls at 

Modena and Bologna. 

25 — Socialist aggression against fascisti at Cecina* 

26 — Fascist reprisal; burn office of socialist press. 

30 — Bloody conflict between socialists and fascisti at Vit- 
toria in Sicily. 

Feb. 8 — Bloody riots at Trieste. Office of Lavoratore again 
attacked, 

16 — Conflicts between socialists and fascisti around Cre- 
mona, Modena, Polesina, Puglia and elsewhere. 
General strike at Livorno. 

20 — Conflicts between socialists and fascisti at Bra, Milan, 
Ferrara, Verona, Taranto, Bari. 

24 — General strike at Bari. Bloody conflicts at Miner- 
vino. 

26 — Conflicts between fascisti and socialists at Torre An- 

nunziata and Rodigno. 

27 — Conflicts between fascisti and socialists at Florence, 

Spezia and Cerignola. 

1921, Mar. I — Barricades and bitter conflicts at Florence. Bolshe- 
vists trap fascisti in ambush at Canfanaro (Istria). 
Labor Hall of Trieste burned by fascisti and ship- 
yards of San Marco by communists. 

2 — Violent fights around Florence. Sailors and police 
massacred in ambush at Empoli. 

4 — Disorders and conflicts throughout Tuscany. 

6 — Bloody attack by communists on a parade at Casale. 
13 — Fresh cruel encounters between fascisti and socialists. 
22 — Conflicts in Puglia and Varesino. 

23 — Terrible anarchist aggression at Diana Theatre, 
Milan. 

24 — Communist aggressions on railroads and at Genoa. 
Conflicts in Tuscany and Puglia. Cruel deeds of 
communists in mines of Castelnuovo dei Sabbloni. 

28 — Labor Hall of Foligno burned by fascistL Bloody 

conflicts at Alessandria and in the Valley of Aosta. 
Apr. 6 — Fiat works close down. Labor Hall of Padua burned. 
8 — Bloody riots in Venetia. Labor Hall of Reggio Emilia 
burned. Mines of Albona are held by workers, cap- 
tured by troops. 

10 — Conflicts in Arezzo, Ferrara, Puglia and Sicily. 



66 


MUSSOLINI 1920 

13-14, — Bloody fights at Livorno. 

ij — Bloody communist attack on fascisti at Folano 
(Chiana). Fascist reprisal by burning Labor Hall of 
Voltri. Conflicts at Vaiano^ Piano, Bozzano, Arezzo, 
etc. 

And so it continues month after month until well into the summer of 
192 15 only to be resumed again though less intensively the following 
October. And this leaves out of account the series of fights for 
Flume, which fall in the same period and aggravated the excitement and 
confusion. 

It was not easy for Mussolini to adjust himself to this drift of events, 
for it demanded a radical reconstruction of the fascism of 1919 he 
had first outlined it. It was he himself who had insisted on the word 
combattimentOj but he had conceived it more in a political sense, not 
this literal and brutal fighting. At first he seems to have taken his po- 
litical debacle more or less cynically. He began to seek comfort and 
salvation for his own individual soul in his former “ absurd but always 
comforting religion of anarchy.” He joined in the general chorus, not 
only of Down with the government ! ” but also of Down with the 
state in general ! ” He talked much of the eternal wolf in human nature, 
of the joy which human beings find in fighting each other in the name 
of humanity, fraternity, and Internationalism,^^ and that “ strife Is the 
origin of all things.” An editorial in the Popolo df Italia^ July 15, 
1920, entitled AmarissimOj probably describes the general state of his 
mind. But he soon reconciled himself to the new situation. In Feb- 
ruary he still dropped occasional remarks about heavy inheritance 
taxes, war profits taxes, confiscation of big estates and similar ideas 
reminiscent of the original program. But by the time of the second 
National Congress in May, there was little mention of this sort of 
thing, and the program of the 1920 Congress was short and simple, con- 
sisting of three main planks, but really only one idea: 

1. The defense of the war, 

2. Revindication of the victory. 

3. Opposition to the “theoretical and practical degeneration of poli- 
ticians^ socialism.” 

About all that was left of the radical program of the previous year 
was a general “ expression of disgust for those men and those organiza- 
tions of the political bourgeoisie who are demonstrating their in- 

V. Diuturna^ pp. 284.-5. 

V. Diutuma^ pp. 280-1. Also Appendix No. 5, 

V, Trieste Speech, Appendix No. 6. 



POLITICAL GYPSIES 67 

capacity to face the problems of both internal and foreign policy, who 
obstruct all far-reaching reforms and oppose any willing recognition of 
the rights of the people, merely accepting the concessions and renun- 
ciations which parliamentary calculations suggest to them/’ The Con- 
gress went on record as being opposed to a party organization, since 
fascism could not be forced into fixed programs, and it declared itself 

free from any prejudices against existing institutions ” {Le,, the 
monarchy). 

At this Marinetti and some of the futurists bolted. Already at the 
congress of Florence in October 1919, Marinetti had become a bit sus- 
picious of his fascist allies. He approved their revised program in 
general, but he noticed “ several serious omissions.” Nothing was said 
about the church; he recommended that Italy be de-vaticanized ” 
and the Pope expelled. The program called for Senate reform; he rec- 
ommended Senate abolition, and in Its place a “ stimulatorium {eccita- 
torio) of competent young men under thirty.” The program called 
for school reform; he recommended schools of physical courage and 
patriotism to replace the now prehistoric and antediluvian courses 
in Greek and Latin.” Finally he resented the fact that no provisions 
had been made for the proletariat of genius ” and genuine brain 
work.” He wanted free expositions of creative genius ” in all cities. 
Consequently when the next congress abandoned both the anti- 
clerical and the anti-monarchist planks, he severed his connection with 
the fasci- 

By September 5, at the fascist congress of Cremona, when no one 
could discover a generally acceptable program, Mussolini said frankly, 

The fascisti are the gypsies of Italian politics ; not being tied down to 
any fixed principles, they proceed unceasingly toward one goal, the fu- 
ture well-being of the Italian people.” In his famous Trieste speech of 
September 20, he emphasized this still more. “ We have no fixed prin- 
ciples (prejudiziali) y and we have none because we are no church; we 
are a movement. We are not a party, we are an athletic body of 
free men.” Then he went on to set up the two great pillars of fascism, 
as he called them. The one was precisely this quality of flexibility, the 
willingness to change with the times, the aversion to all panaceas and 
absolutes, a quality which Mussolini called ‘^pragmatism and anti- 
demagogism.” The other was fascism’s revived consciousness of the 
ancient glories of Italy, of the Roman Empire, of the Renaissance, of 
the risorgimentO) and the continuation of this tradition by interven- 
tion in the World War, by the heroism of d’Annunzio’s legions and 
by the fascist struggle for a new imperial Rome, which would mark 
the culmination of Italy’s traditional glory and leadership among the 



68 FIUME AND FASCISM 

nations. All this led up to the battle cry: ‘"We are ready to kill and 
be killed! 

Though these sentiments were very congenial to the temper of squad- 
rism and served to arouse the fighting spirit on both sides, they were 
inspired in Mussolini’s own case more by the problem of Fiume and by 
foreign policy in general, than by the Internal situation. For, as we have 
noted, throughout this period he seemed more enthusiastic about the 
revival of militant patriotism and the campaign of the nationalists 
against both the allies and the ""renunciatory” Italian government, 
than he was about the so-called civil war. In fact, he persisted in trying 
to view the latter as merely corollary to the former, minimizing the 
economic basis of the strife and exaggerating the patriotic issues. 

Many of the squadrists too, being arditi, were very much excited 
about Fiume, not a few of them joining the expedition. When, on 
Christmas Day 1920, the government ordered troops against d’An- 
nunzlo, these fascisti wanted to revolt immediately and overthrow the 
government. But Mussolini and the Milan group were content with 
words, merely heaping invectives on Giolitti. For they were not pro- 
fessed nationalists and though they were ardent for Fiume, they thought 
d’Annunzio had gone to useless extremes. For political reasons as well, 
these would-be radicals and republicans could not support d’AnnunzIo 
too slavishly. As a result there were serious splits In many of the fasci. 
For example, In the Florence fascia, which was then headed by Umberto 
Pasella, the republican Mussolini politician, most of the squadrists 
under Dumini, and the intellectual nationalists under the leadership of 
Professor Agnoletti, withdrew and formed the Fascia Gabriele (TAn- 
nunzio. But after this affair was settled such breaches were soon healed, 
not, however, without causing a notable growth in nationalist sentiment 
throughout the fascist movement. 

F. The Fascist Party 

Mussolini and his associates were by no means content to have fas- 
cism assume merely this squadrist character. For though it was ad- 
mirably adapted to the needs of the moment, it could not be permanent 
and when the struggle was over it would degenerate into a sort of 
"" Roman letter fraternity ” or into one more patriotic social club of 
the Garibaldist type. He wanted fascism to be a permanent political 
force, and to this he bent his efforts from the start. He had never been 
a squadrist himself and had never conceived of fascism in military 
terms. By 1921 he privately confessed he was tired of all the "" Duce ” 

cf. Popolo dUtalia, October 17, 1920. 



BEGINNINGS OF THE HIERARCHY 69 

talk and the military spirit and wished he could settle down to being 
a civil leader of a civil movement^® 

The trend of events had obviously spelled failure for his original politi- 
cal program, but it had not interrupted the work of political organization 
which he and his immediate associates had been carrying on assiduously, 
and which enabled fascism to enjoy continuity In action, however much 
its programs might change. Fascism, being multiple in its origins and 
aims, could not be expected to start out with a consistent and perma- 
nent program. That it achieved unity at all and a national organization 
is largely due to the persistent efforts of Mussolini to get and keep 
control of it. 

Immediately after the first formal session of March 23, 1919, a 
hierarchy of officials was established; a secretary general, assistant 
secretary general, and provincial secretaries. Then a number of mis- 
sionaries, or “ confidential agents ” {fiduciari) as they were called, were 
sent out into those provinces where fascism was just beginning and 
where such new units could be brought under the Milan control. 
Prominent among these early organizers were Umberto Pasella, Luigi 
Freddi, Alessandro Melchiorri, and Francesco Giunta. In Emilia and 
Romagna such agents were at home, so to speak, for the local organizers 
of these provinces cooperated continually with the Milan group and 
were represented at its meetings. But in Tuscany, Umbria, and regions 
south, these men were outsiders, sent to impose themselves on the local 
organizations. They were literally Mussolini’s “ trusties,” mostly men 
of mediocre ability, whom Mussolini could control and who represented 
his point of view. Most of them were ex-labor organizers or some other 
of “ subversive ” politician. It is, of course, difficult to generalize 
in this matter, but on the whole it is safe to say that they worked in 
two chief directions : 

(1) They gave what local organizations they found or created a 
political form and incorporated them in the general scheme. Where 
local leaders were too prominent and too insistent on autonomy, they 
tried to wrest control from them and focus all eyes on Mussolini. Th^- 
naturally collected subscriptions for the Popolo d’ltdia, the “ official 
paper.” 

(2) They tried to win the lower classes. 

As we have already pointed out the Milan group were more “ prole- 
tarian ” than others, certainly more so than the Tuscan and southern 
fasci. Occasionally it happened that Mussolini would declare a 
benevolent neutrality during squadrist raids, in order to discourage 
the impression that he was sold to the bourgeoisie. Mussolini’s 
cf. Misuri: Rvvolta Morale^ p, 197. 



70 THE POLITICAL GAME 

agents, wherever they went, set to work to organize syndicates, to ap- 
peal to the masses, to gather together whatever malcontents and 
revolutionary spirits they could, and especially to welcome as many so- 
cialists and communists as could be converted. Naturally neither the 
means used for conversion nor the converts were always of the highest 
quality. 

Politicians are politicians the world over, and the details of this story 
must be left to the reader’s Imagination. I mention a few samples and 
pass on. Umberto Pasella was made Secretary General and set out to 
organize Tuscany. He came to Florence, but found the squadrists and 
local politicians both hostile to his interference. Mussolini then worked 
directly through the local politicians. For a while an ex-captain Zam- 
boni kept politicians and squadrists reconciled. But when the split 
came at the time of the Flume crisis, Mussolini seized the opportunity 
to send his man Dino Perrone, the Provincial Secretary, who enjoyed 
rural support, to restore harmony and whip the Florentine fascio into 
line. Then followed incessant friction between local politicians like 
Agnoletti and Pirelli, and the ofhcial secretaries. Meanwhile Pasella 
had established a struggling syndical organization, but it made little 
headway because of the rich men’s sons and middle class domination 
in the fascio. When the party was being organized In 1921, Cesare 
Rossi, the Assistant Secretary General and one of Mussolini’s right- 
hand men (the other being Blanchi), took occasion to oust Pasella, 
because of a more or less personal dispute which Pasella had got into 
at Florence. ‘ Whereupon Pasella continued to lead a rival, autonomous 
fascio until 1922 when he was re-admitted. 

The story of Perugia is somewhat similar. Misuri, of whose middle- 
class Unione Sindacale we have an account above, secured the services 
of one Guido Pighetti, a professional syndicalist organizer, and while 
Misuri, Bastianini, Ucelli and the old squadrists were out on their 
punitive expeditions, which they conducted with exceptional vigor and 
violence, Pighetti was busy collecting syndicate members. In August 
1920 he succeeded in having himself appointed fiduciario by Rossi, the 
Milan Secretary, in order to organize an official fascio di combattimento. 
After its formation in January 1921, Misuri continued to direct the 
fighting and enjoyed the support of the nationalists and liberals. Pi- 
ghetti, being a Mason, got the support of the Masonic organization and 
of the democrats with whom the Masons work. Then he raked in what 
labor elements he could by hook or crook and with these forces at- 
tacked Misuri. The Masons and democrats now used Pighetti to the 
limit to get control of the Perugian fascio, while Misuri rallied the con- 
servative forces to his support. Pighetti finally won out In the local 



IN PAr^\:MENT 71 

electi<|)ns, but during the campaign Misurl had made remarks reflecting 
both bn Pighetti’s syndicalist tactics and on his private character. A 
duel 'vvas the inevitable consequence. Pighetti was wounded. Musso- 
lini n Dw sent an investigating committee, but before their report, which 
was f^avorable to Misuri, had come out, Misuri had launched his attack 
on the Milan clique in general and as a result was expelled from 
the P arty. 

i se are but a few incidents in a vast network of political maneu- 
and organization. Mussolini now became eloquent on the 
ts of discipline and hierarchy, a gospel preached for the Italian 
, but intended immediately for the all too Independent fasci. But 
more later. 

jsolini’s political tactics and ambitions were suddenly given a new 
y Giolitti’s decision in April 1921 to dissolve Parliament and call 
V elections, in the hope that he might get a more tractable Cham- 
3 e asked the jascist i and nationalists to cooperate with the other 
; class groups in forming a constitutional bloc ’’ to offer a united 
Lb' the menacing "Sbcralist and Popular Parties. Remembering 
iperience In 1919, the fascisti and nationalists were glad to ac- 
cept the proposal and now made common cause, supporting each other’s 
candidates. The result was that the Catholic south, where the Popular 
Party had almost undisputed sway, held its own, but in the north the 
constitutional bloc was able to rob the socialists of about twenty seats. 
Thirty-five fascisti found themselves In the Chamber of Deputies, to- 
gether with ten nationalists and a still smaller group of national liberals. 
Except for a popular young professor of economics at Vincenza, Alberto 
De Stefani, whom his students had elected, all of the fascisti owed part 
of their support to the nationalist vote. Nevertheless they came out 
of the elections the strongest single group of a very weak nationalist 
bloc. The gains were too small to do Giolitti much good. Among the 
fascisti elected were Mussolini (deputy from Milan and Bologna), 
Farinacci (from Cremona), Paolucci and Gay (nationalistic fascists), 
Bottai (a republican), Acerbo (from the Abruzzi), Coda (violently 
monarchist), Misuri (from Perugia) and others representing in 
general a group of popular local leaders, a large proportion coming 
from Tuscany and the central provinces, where the bloc had been most 
successful. 

This brought the Mussolini group of fascist politicians face to face 
with two serious problems: their relation to the other parliamentary 
groups and their relation to the fascist deputies. It seemed, off-hand, 
as though the Milan clique would have to play a minor role in both 
cases. But they played the game hard. 



72 THE GENTLEIVTAISJ 'OF THE RIGHT ( 

Immediately after the election Mussolini announced to Giolitki that 
he could not count on his support, that liberalism was a dead causle, that 
Giolitti would not have enough support from the masses anywaW, and 
that he, Mussolini, felt no obligation to keep alive an artificiafl bloc. 
So much for the liberals. f 

Next, Cesare Rossi, the leader of the Milan clique, whispe pd to 
Mussolini that now would be a good time to announce the rept| ^blican 
tendency of fascism.’’ This he did in a widely advertised newspa|s)er ar- 
ticle, and he emphasized it by absenting himself and his fasclpst co- 
deputies from the sitting at which the King read his address. Thl^is had 
the desired effect on the nationalists. They, being ardent monarTochlsts, 
were duly scandalized, and the distinction between nationalist and 
fascists, which had practically disappeared during the electoral cam- 
paign, was vigorously reasserted. The bloc was broken up right the 

start, and Mussolini felt free to step out as ^^the leader of new 

Right.” He and his comrades made themselves conspicuous by s) Ktting 
on the extreme right, which position, as Mussolini put it, “ was-^ lihysl- 
cally favorable for combattimento!^ He now made light of the 
crats, liberals, and other middle-class groups, the groups from whtt%h 
most of the cabinet members and ex-cabinet members came, tola^ 
them that the liberal-democratic state was doomed and that “ the 
world is turning to the Right.” The main lines of the program of this 
fascist right wing, as he outlined them in his address in the Chamber on 
July 21, were a strong foreign policy and an individualistic, laissez faire 
economic policy, coupled with a reassertion of the authority and In- 
tegrity of the state in those matters which fall in its proper sphere. 

At the same time he was building up this new Right, he was making 
peace with the socialists. Though he met with determined resistance 
both at the hands of the socialists and of his own followers, he was 
finally able to get a ^‘Pact of Pacification” signed on August 3rd. 
Meanwhile, July 23, he had expounded to the Chamber of Deputies 
at some length his ideas about Church and State, which turned out to 
be surprisingly similar to those of the Popular Party. Then he sug- 
gested that the nation needed a government of coalition of the “ three 
parties that really represented the masses,” the Socialist, Popular and 
Fascist Parties. This proposal was quite ludicrous at the time, but a 
year later (that is, only a few months before the March on Rome), 
when the King consulted Filippo Turati, the reformist socialist leader, 
about the possibilities of his heading a cabinet, Mussolini immediately 
took the occasion to revive this idea. He wrote in the Popolo d^Italia, 
July 30, 1922, as follows: 

In Diuturna^ pp, 449—452. 



THE REPUBLICAN URGE 


73 

“ There is much talk these days of coalitions. In this matter I should 
like to say what may seem a paradox. I think that sooner or later, we 
are headed for a grand coalition between the three effective forces in 
the life of the country. There is no use talking of the democratic-liberals 
and of the social-democrats, who are inside but not within the country; 
but of socialism, which has already by the vote of the Confederation of 
Labor in regard to public services, shown its capacity to govern; 
of the Popular Party, a real and powerful force based on the force of 
Catholicism, and a third force, which gathers together the best energies 
of the country, vi%. fascism. It will be this coalition which will have the 
merit of leading Italy toward her higher destinies.’’ 

How much of all this Mussolini really took seriously is difficult to 
say. It is true that it represents a final emergence of his early prej- 
udices ” and aims. He may still have a suppressed desire to see himself 
at the head of Italian socialism, in revenge for his expulsion from the 
Party and in refutation of the charge which he will probably carry 
to his grave, that he betrayed the cause of socialism and of the masses 
to the enemy. No human mind can be absolutely relative, and it is but 
natural that even a Mussolini should feel occasional regrets for the 
causes he had left behind him. Certainly a man who aspired to be the 
leader of revolutionary masses may be excused a bit of rationalization 
when he finds himself at the head of a handful of extreme-right 
deputies. 

The matter was more than personal bias, however. It was Milan 
politics, for these tactics had not been without effect within the fascist 
ranks. When the republican trend was announced, a number of the 
fascist deputies were no less upset than were the nationalists, for the 
republican urge among fascists had never been felt keenly outside 
Milan. The great majority of fascists were fairly indifferent on the 
subject. But many others had very decided prejudices in favor of the 
monarchy and regarded attacks on the King as treasonable. Several of 
the parliamentary group, as the deputies came to be called, openly 
told Mussolini that they would have none of his republican trend, 
and of the social-democrats, who are inside but not within the country, 
Misuri, for example, attended the royal session in defiance of Musso- 
lini. At the first meeting of the parliamentary group at Milan the 
divergence was very evident and lines were clearly drawn between the 
Mussolini crowd and the independent deputies. Remarks were made 
about the crooked game of the Milan clique, and in return Mussolini 
said that the newcomers to fascism must not expect to have the broad 
outlook and familiarity with its traditions which characterized the 
founders. In short the deputies were told that fascism was not to be 



74 THE PACT OF PACIFICATION 

bossed from the benches of Parliament, and in return the deputies 
said they were not tied to a party and had a right to use their own judg- 
ment in their political conduct. 

The opposition within the ranks to the republican trend was evi- 
dently much stronger than the Milan group had anticipated. Only 
a few days after the announcement had been made, and as soon as it had 
worked its desired eflFects, Mussolini beat a hasty retreat, explaining 
that fascism had no tendencies whatsoever, that it was neither monarch- 
ist nor republican, that the monarchy in fact had much for which to 
thank the fascisti and that the movement would continue to be without 
political prejudices, adopting always whatever policies might make for 
the moral elevation, etc. 

Hardly was this excitement over, when a still worse internal crisis 
arose out of Mussolini’s pact of pacification with the socialists. He had 
become worried over the continued fighting, and had noticed that the 
unnecessary and bloody fights of Sarzana, Roccastrada, Treviso, Terni, 
and Perugia had alienated the affections of a large part of the favorably 
inclined public. For by now public sentiment, even socialist sentiment, 
had abandoned the communists to such an extent that the danger of 
revolution seemed definitely removed. Since the fascisti enjoyed the 
support of public opinion, of press, and of government, they had nothing 
to fear, and further violence appeared to be sheer blood-thirstiness and 
brutal persecution of a vanquished enemy. For these reasons, Mus- 
solini willingly accepted the suggestion of d’Annunzio and also of the 
government that a fascist-socialist truce was necessary. He explained 
to his squadrists that the need for fighting had passed, that fascism 
must now turn to its constructive tasks, and that just as the nation 
welcomed us when our movement meant the breaking up of a tyranny, 
so the nation would repudiate us if our movement should assume the 
form of a new tyranny.” 

The truce found practically no support outside Milan. The majority 
of fighting fascists favored war to the finish with socialism. They were 
somewhat annoyed by the Socialist Congress of Livorno in January 
1921, which by a large majority repudiated communism and forced 
the maximalists out of the party. But they interpreted this as a sign 
of disintegration, the beginning of the end of socialism. A little more 
hammering and the fascist victory would be complete. Hence it ap- 
peared ridiculous to them that fascism ‘‘should ally itself with a 
corpse.” The communists at least were respected for their willing- 
ness to fight for their cause (only “they didn’t know how to 
Pofolo dUtalfciy July 27, 19^1. In Diuturna^ p, 344. 
cf. Soffci: BattagUe fra due vittorie. 



THE NATIONAL FASCIST PARTTi' 75 

figh but for that bourgeois, reformist, politicians’ they 

had the same disgust which the pre-war Mussolini had, Tl"y regarded 
it as part of that sluggish, lifeless mass of political matter trom which 
fascism was trying to free the Italian people. The Partito So- 

cialista was nicknamed the pus. In short the theory was that fasc’x®. 
was fighting the communists because they were unpatriotic and the so- 
cialists because they were putrid. It was useless for Mussolini to argue, 
in rather tortuous fashion, that the pact merely signified a return to 
fascism’s original principles,” or to appeal to the national interests 
and the constructive problems awaiting fascism. The fascisti, especially 
the squadrists, saw no occasion for peace yet, and in fact obstructed the 
negotiations by new fights. The provincial meetings in Emilia, Ro- 
magna and Tuscany, lead on by Farinacci, of&cially rejected the pact. 
Thereupon Rossi, who apparently had inspired the pact and who had 
written a scathing article against continued fascist violence, resigned 
his office on the Directorate immediately. Mussolini was obliged to do 
likewise. He accompanied his resignation with the words: “During 
these last weeks I have made it clearly understood that I would feel 
unable to guide an undisciplined and chaotic movement any longer. 
... I willed and firmly willed a treaty of peace; however, hundreds 
of fasci did not want to hear of it and said so explicitly. It is not I 
who leave; it is the others who force me to go, for their vote strikes 
at me particularly and disqualifies me.” 

A few days later a meeting was held at Milan, the resignation was 
refused and the pact of pacification accepted. Nothing more was said 
about the matter, however occasional fights took place as before. In 
November at Rome where the fascisti held their annual national con- 
gress, a protest strike of tramway and transportation workers was de- 
clared. The fascisti tried to break it and violence was resorted to on 
both sides. This furnished Mussolini with a convenient occasion and 
adequate pretext for officially declaring the truce broken and the pact 
null and void. 

Another and more fundamental issue was decided at Rome. The 
internal chaos in the fascist ranks and the parliamentary situation had 
led Mussolini and his group to demand a definite party organization 
for fascism. All the summer, the Popolo d'ltalia had spread propaganda 
for the party, and before the congress met Mussolini announced that 
the party was a foregone conclusion. Nevertheless there was vigorous 
opposition and, as Mussolini later remarked, the Rome congress of 
November 1921 marked one of the most serious crises in the history of 
fascism. The chief issue centered on the nature of the party: was it 

V. Pofolo August 3, 1921. In Dittiuma, p. 348. 



76 TNE national FASCIST PARTY 

to be an ordinary political party, controlled by an official bureaucracy 
or not? F^” ^damentally it was a struggle between tlie JVIilan lilerc rcliy 
and those f t)rces that were making for loose local organization. ..hree 
main were represented. Mussolini and Massimo Rocca defended 

New Right '' conception of fascism. According to them there 
was need of a well organized parliamentary party of the ^ right wing 
to counterbalance the Socialist and Popular Parties. Fascism was to 
continue the work of Cavour. It would accept the Treaty of Rapallo 
and carry on an imperialistic foreign policy, and counteract democratic 
and socialistic tendencies at home. They warned against revolutionary 
tactics in the current economic crisis, and against economic paternalism. 
They favored the organization of national economic councils of experts, 
but otherwise recommended an individualistic economic policy. Mus- 
solini in particular emphasized that both the parasitic capitalists and 
the class-conscious workers must be subjected to the higher interests 
of the nation. Fascism must take a constructive, political form now that 
the violent and revolutionary phase was passed. He spoke as one with 
authority. He outlined his own political views and seemed to expect 
them to be accepted by all fascisti as a matter of party discipline. 

A second point of view was defended by Dino Grandi, formerly a 
d'Annunzian nationalist. He was not radically opposed to any party 
organization whatsoever, but to a party which was merely political. 
He reminded Mussolini of the generally accepted principle that fascism 
was not a party but a movement. Furthermore, he Insisted, it was a 
revolutionary movement, a movement of combattimento, fundamentally 
“ romantic ” like that of the traditional Left of Mazzini and Garibaldi. 
He urged d’Annunzian tactics, opposed the Treaty of Rapp alio, op- 
posed the pact with the socialists, and looked forward to a new kind 
of democracy, not parliamentarian but genuinely popular and syndical- 
istic. He summed up his program in the following formula: fascism 
should be a synthesis of the idealistic forces of modernism, syndicalism, 
and nationalism, which were generated even before the war, but which 
needed the war to liberate them from the reigning “ materialistic ’’ 
forces of clericalism, liberalism, and socialism. Fascism must be 
inspired, he insisted, by the nationalist philosophy of the state as a posi- 
tive, organic, spiritual whole, in opposition to the negative individu- 
alistic philosophy of the state typified by the liberalism of Cavour. 
He preferred to see the fascist deputies seated, not on the right, but as 
a mountain of the center/^ 

A third view came from Pietro Marsich, of Venice, and was in general 
that of the national-liberals. It was closer to Grandi^s than to Musso- 
lini^s, being opposed to a mere party and favoring syndical organlza- 



THE NATIONAL FASCIST PARTY 


77 

tioiij but it reflected a conservative bias, an individualistic economics 
and in general a less romantic fighting spirit than Grandi’s. Marsich 
was by far the most sober-minded, reasoned and critical of all the ora- 
tors, but he was less interested in a practical plan for the moment, 
than in building up a comprehensive theory for the fascist state. 

Behind these three views there lurked the deep-seated regional dif- 
ferences in the structure and aims of fascism, to say nothing of the con- 
flicts between rival groups of politicians. After the speeches were over, 
a commission was appointed to draft a program synthesizing all three 
points of view and the congress closed with a general reconciliation and 
apparent agreement. The chief result was an overwhelming majority 
for the Partito Nazionale Fas cist a. While many of the squadrist fas- 
cists were preoccupied in the piazza and on the streets, fighting the 
strike, the new secretariat of the party, selected by a very small group 
and consisting entirely of Mussolini men, was formally installed in 
the auditorium of the August eo. It turned out afterwards that the 
synthetic harmony in which the convention closed was not so con- 
spicuous in practice. Grandi was supplaxiied in the party hierarchy 
by Baroncini and Balbo, and as for Marsich, he disappeared from the 
arena altogether. The program appeared several weeks later, and was 
Mussolinian in its main lines, though it was so bedecked with nation- 
alistic verbiage and platitudes that it could mean all things to all men. 
In defending it Mussolini fell back on the ever convenient gospel of 
relativism.^^ The program, he said, was perfectly fascist, for it was a 
program of action not of theoretical exposition, of general aims for the 
nation, not of the specific means which must always be left to the 
dictates of time and circumstance. “Fascism,’^ he said, “is not a 
museum of dogmas and principles.” This is but a symptom of the 
fundamental predicament in which Mussolini was placed, a predicament 
from which fascism in general has not yet freed itself. As a member 
of the Milan group, Mussolini’s sympathies were decidedly to the 
Left; as a member of Parliament he had to play the game of the nation- 
alist Right. Later Misuri summed up the situation succinctly: “ The 
tendency toward the left, encouraged by the complicated and obscure 
activities of the most irresponsible and degenerate left-wing elements, 
was merely an opportunistic and demagogic show. In reality, fascism 
tends neither to the right nor to the left. The party has pretended 
to go to the left; the government has pretended to go to the right; but 
in fact both go zig-zag according to the dictates of the moment.”^ 
Such “gypsy politics” did not worry Mussolini, who was proud of 

V. Pofolo ^ Italia^ November 22, 1921. In Diutuma^ p. 374. 

Misuri: Rvoolta Morale^ p. 48. 



78 the militia 

being a relativist and a naan of action; but it made it dfficult for him to 
express his ideas. 

Without implicating the program in any way, Mussolini dropped 
some casual remarks in an editorial, which throw some light on the 
direction his own thoughts were taking: 

It can not be maintained that we are headed for a period of greater 
liberty, of greater democracy with its various suffrage schemes. It is 
possible that the next decades will witness the inglorious end of all the 
so-called conquests of democracy. From government by many or by 
all, the extreme ideal of democracy, men will probably turn to gov- 
ernment by a few or by one only. In economics the experiment of 
government by many or all has already failed; in Russia they are re- 
turning to dictators in the factories. Politics must inevitably follow 
economics. I do not see clearly how universal suffrage and its propor- 
tionalistic amendments will turn out. Before long it will be an old 
game. Men will, perhaps, long for a dictator.’’ 

Whether he was already playing seriously with the idea of dictator, 
whether he was waiting for a preponderance of his party in Parliament, 
whether he felt it his duty to maintain a non-party, anti-parliamentary 
attitude, or whether he was merely disgusted with the talk of party 
bargainings in the Chamber of Deputies, the fact is that after the 
foundation of the party he took little active part in Parliament, and 
devoted himself to an intensive study of foreign relations, to strength- 
ening his grip on the party machine, and to disciplining the militia. 

In fact the forming of the militia was but the military aspect of the 
forming of the party. Both events signified the inquadramento of the 
fascist forces into an ordered hierarchy. And on the whole, the more 
ordered it was, the more orderly it became. 

It was at this time that fascism acquired most of its rites and ritual. 
Not only the uniforms of the arditi were adopted but also their songs, 
symbols and organization. The Latinism and Romanism of d’Annunzio 
already suggested in Mussolini’s Trieste speech became a dominant 
characteristic. April 21, the legendary date of the founding of Rome, 
was made a fascist holiday, on which day In place of the usual undis- 
ciplined crowds or of the old-fashioned parades and religious proces- 
sions, the fascisti proposed to revive the severe Roman march.” The 
Roman salute, the lictor’s rods and fascia^ the cry of eia-eia-a-la-ldj were 
adopted and popularized, and proved especially attractive to large 
bodies of students and to the middle-class youth in general, who joined 
in large numbers. The squads were also given a Roman military or- 
ganization: they were formed into maniples, centuries, cohcrts, and 
Fofolo November 22, 1921. In Diuturna, p. 37/ 



PARLIAMENTARY CRISIS 


79 

legions. Mussolini became “ Chief Honorary Corporal ” of the legions. 
The whole organization was dignified with the term Militia, and was 
declared to be from then on devoted exclusively to the national service. 
Shortly before the March on Rome, De Vecchi, Fiume legionary and 
the real founder of the militia, drew up an “ ethical decalogue ’’ for 
“ fascist soldiers in which the duties and qualifications of a militiaman 
are laid down. 

The chief activity now remaining for the militia was the comparatively 
peaceful one of strike-breaking. Strikes had decreased notably by 
1922, especially In the rural regions, where the squadrlsts had done their 
work most thoroughly. The strike figures for 1920 were: in industry 
1,267,935, in agriculture 1,045,732; in 1921 they fell to 644,564 in in- 
dustry, and only 79,298 in agriculture.^^ The country had been saved 
from bolshevism! Nevertheless there were still serious disorders, espe- 
cially railroad strikes. This invasion of bolshevism into the public 
services incurred the special wrath of fascisti and nationalists, not 
merely because it was a public nuisance, but because it undermined the 
moral conception of the state. 

On the whole, however, in the summer of 1922 business was running 
low for the squadrists, and the fasci were filling up rapidly with college 
boys and other lads who enjoyed the marches, uniforms, salutes, and 
yells. The movement was becoming increasingly ceremonial. It was 
also becoming Increasingly a politicians’ game. The “ constructive 
tasks ” of which Mussolini spoke were too intangible and the higher 
duties ” too prosaic to interest fascisti di combattimento. Defections 
in the ranks spread. Something had to be done; work had to be found 
for idle arms. 

FL The Fascist Revolution 

Fortunately work was at hand. Parliament was deadlocked. The 
elections on which Giolitti had relied to free him from socialist pressure 
had merely postponed the evil day a little. The situation was very 
complicated, but the root of the trouble was this. Thanks to propor- 
tional representation which had been Introduced for the purpose In 1920, 
the middle-class groups had saved themselves from a complete rout and 
held about one half the Chamber, but the dominant parties were the 
socialists of the north and the popularists of the south. Because of 
this regional separation, as well as for other reasons, socialists and 
popularists were very jealous of each other. The middle-class gov- 
ernment could not carry on without support from one or the other of 
them and tried to weaken these two opposition parties by playing them 
Bonomi; From Socialism to Fascismy p. 83. 



8o 


FASCIST DEMANDS 


off against each other. The socialists in their turn, being the largest 
single group, wanted to head the ministry and have the lion’s share of 
the government. The Popular Party, holding the balance between right 
and left, thought it ought to be at the head, a position which the centrist 
parties of several other nations were enjoying at the time. The middle- 
class groups would not listen to a socialist prime minister, whereupon 
the socialists would not listen to any other. Endless party squabbling 
ensued. Cabinet after cabinet failed to break the deadlock. Finally it 
looked as though the King, having exhausted all possible middle-class 
candidates, would be forced to call a socialist prime minister, and there 
was some hope that Mussolini might be willing to join such a ministry. 
But he insisted that he would welcome socialists and popularists in a 
ministry headed by him, but would not enter a ministry headed by an- 
other. Meanwhile the press and public opinion was becoming daily more 
exasperated, until by fall Parliament hardly had a single friend in the 
country. The members themselves were disgusted with each other 
and the King was weary of selecting impossible prime ministers. The 
nationalists, anti-parliament by principle, now fused with the fascisti, 
and together they launched an open attack not merely on the current 
tactics of the parties, but on the whole parliamentary state as such. 

The so-called coup d^etat was by no means as sudden nor as violent 
as is commonly believed. Certainly it was not made in secret. During 
the spring and summer Mussolini had written extensively on the subject 
of the fascist versus the liberal state.^® On September 20, the anni- 
versary of the capture of Rome in 1870, Mussolini announced at Udine 
that the fascisti were ready to rule Italy, he spoke of the fascist revo- 
lution,” he raised the cry “ On to Rome ! ” He also definitely made his 
peace with the monarchy and said the change of political regime could 
be brought about without disturbing the House of Savoy. The only 
trouble with the present King being that he was not monarchic enough. 
A number of speeches followed in rapid succession, each explaining 
more definitely than the preceding how fascism hoped to establish the 
fascist state. Immediately after the fascisti had overthrown the German 
administration of Bolzano and had met no resistance from the national 
government, Mussolini presented a series of demands to the Chamber, 
declaring that they were the only possible remedy for the deadlock. If 
they were not accepted he threatened force. The demands were, in 
Mussolini’s words, "‘the dissolving of the Chamber, electoral reform 
and elections within a short time. We demanded that the state abandon 
Its grotesque neutrality between the forces of the nation and those of 

^ V. For example, Pofolo d^Italia, April 30, 1922. In Dmtumaj p. 423. Gerar* 
cMa, 1 : 6, pp, 295 £F. 



THE MARCH ON ROME 


the anti-nation. We demanded strenuous financial measures, we de- 
manded reconsideration of the evacuation of the Dalmatian zone, and 
we demanded five portfolios besides the Commission of Aviation. We 
demanded, to be precise, the Ministry of the Exterior, of War, of the 
Navy, of Labor and of Public Works. . . . And included in this legal 
solution was the provision that my own direct participation in the gov- 
ernment be excluded.’’ The parliamentary leaders naturally merely 
smiled at these demands and suggested that the fascisti might have a 
minister without portfolio or some “under-ministers.” For in Parlia- 
ment no one took fascism seriously. Politicians had listened to the 
bumptious fascist talk and gestures for several years, and seeing but 
the handful of deputies which resulted from it all, they were more 
amused than frightened by it, treated it condescendingly and never 
thought of taking it literally. In a sense this was true of the country at 
large, for though the movement was much more popular outside than 
inside Parliament, and though it was regarded as the symbol of the 
new spirit of Italy, it was not thought of as a major political force. But 
Mussolini did not share these views and insisted that “ fascism would 
not enter the government by the service entrance.” Consequently the 
events which now followed came as a surprise, though they had been 
heralded from the housetops for months previously. 

During October the fascisti^ who were already complete masters in 
most of the Important cities of northern Italy, took possession of the 
prefectures and police headquarters of the others and spread their 
control to the southern centers. The railroads and telegraph offices, 
which had been defended by fascisti in recent strikes, were now 
“ guarded ” by them. On October 24th a national congress was called at 
Na'ples — at Naples, of course, in order to impress the comparatively 
indifferent south and to make the movement appear genuinely national 
in scope. The Revolution was discussed openly and Mussolini an- 
nounced that if a legal solution were not found immediately a march 
on Rome would be necessary. 

Facta, a very pleasant and peaceful old man, was officially the head 
of the government, but he was really powerless since he could not 
command a majority in the Chamber and had even less authority out- 
side Parliament. He therefore let matters drift The ministry re- 
signed. Immediately after the Naples Convention, the fascisti hosts 
assembled at Civitavecchia, a little north of Rome. They were mobil- 
ized under military formation and military law by the dictatorial 
authority of a “ secret quadrumvirate,” Michele Bianchl, General De 
Bono, Captain DeVecchi, and Lieutenant Italo Balbo. Mussolini went 
From the Naples speech, October 24, 1922. 



82 AFTERTHOUGHTS 

to Milan to await events. The march was ordered and on October 
28th the legions of black shirts with a sprinkling of blue shirts, about 
50,000 strong, began piling into Rome. The proclamation of the quad- 
rumvirate stated that the march was not made against the arrny, nor 
the police, nor the King, nor against the productive bourgeoisie ” nor 
against the “ masses that work in fields and offices,” but only against 
a political class of weaklings and defectives who for four years had not 
been able to give the nation a government.” There was no fighting and 
no opposition. The troops assembled more peacefully than they had 
a year ago in the same place, when they had been met by a strike. 
Facta hastily declared a state of siege, but recalled the order almost im- 
mediately when the King refused to sign it. Rumor has it that the 
King was inclined to sign it but was dissuaded by the Duke of Aosta, 
on the ground that the army would not fight. Everything now waited 
for the King’s action, since only the King could act under the circum- 
stances. On the afternoon of the 28th, Salandra asked Mussolini if he 
would accept a cabinet post under him, which was of course refused. 
On the 29th Mussolini was called to the telephone and asked by the 
King to form a ministry. He took the next train to Rome, announcing 
as he left Milan, “ Tomorrow Italy will have not a ministry but a gov- 
ernment.” He stopped at Civitavecchia and Santa IVIarinella, where 
the great bulk of the fascist forces (about 150,000) were still mobilized. 
By the evening of October 30th, the new ministry was formed and 
Mussolini ordered his Chief of Staff, much to the latter’s amazement, to 
get the 50,000 fascisti out of Rome within twenty-four hours. The 
Revolution was over. 

It is a metaphysical question whether the revolution was violent or 
not, or for that matter, whether or not there was a revolution at alL 
Some say the event was little more than a parade to celebrate a cabinet 
crisis, others regard it as comparable to the French Revolution. From 
the point of view of the careers of the fascisti, there can be no doubt of 
its significance. In a very few years they had risen from obscure jour- 
nalists, labor agitators, soldiers, students, political and social nobodies, 
to the heads of the Italian state. They saw themselves transformed 
overnight, as it were, from boys to statesmen. They naturally Imagined 
that all Italy had undergone a similar transformation, and in this they 
were not altogether mistaken. Whether they were the cause of It or not, 
they certainly became the symbol and focus of as dramatic and radical 
a change in political sentiment and national feeling as has ever been 
witnessed. In 1919 the fascisti received about four thousand votes; 
in 1924 about four million. Though these votes give an exaggerated 
impression of the extent of the revolution, they may be taken as a rough 



AFTERTHOUGHTS 83 

Index of the shift of public opinion. It was a revolution in opinion 
rather than in practice. But among the fascisti whom it affected in 
practice, it created a ferment of emotion and ideation much more revo- 
lutionary than the event itself, and the picture which lives in the fascist 
mind has already assumed such heroic and mythological proportions 
as to bear little likeness to the reality which generated it. This living 
myth is perhaps more significant and will certainly be more enduring 
than the modest tangible achievements which it celebrates. 

The idea that Italy has periodic rejuvenations is of course not new. 
Renaissance and risorgimento are unusually familiar themes in Italian 
tradition. Even before the war there was a general feeling that Italy 
was getting stale and needed a new start. The Tripoli War rejuvenated 
a few exceptionally sensitive romantics. When the World War came, 
the interventionists immediately were convinced that surely this war 
would start the re-birth. But no; after the war, pessimism and world- 
weariness ruled stronger than ever. This was attributed to the old age 
of the democratic, liberalistic order. It was represented as living on the 
husks handed down by several generations. Decadent in tastes, weak 
in politics, entangled in institutions which had long ago outlived their 
usefulness, and clinging to faiths long dead. Then to see groups of 
young men quite spontaneously rise up out of the very depths of this 
despair and carry the whole nation to a fresh confidence in its abilities 
and to new hopes for its future — this was the deed which several 
generations had longed to do but could not. 

Believing this as they do, the fascisti have no patience with those 
who label them as reactionaries. Mussolini, when he was asked whether 
his government would go right or left, said he was not interested in 
“ historic terminologies.” • In terms of traditional class theory, fascism 
may no doubt be called a lower-middle-class reaction. But “lower 
middle class ” Is obviously no adequate description of the leaders of 
the New Italy. Financially the fascisti may be neither poor nor rich, 
but intellectually and morally, they claim to be the cream of the 
nation. The fascist revolution is said to be a “ reaction of idealists ” 
in the interests of “ a solid nation, impartiality, justice, spiritual, intel- 
lectual and moral light.” Though no one takes this literally, it is 
certainly true that the old categories can not be transplanted bodily into 
the revolutionary regime. Of its economic characteristics we shall speak 
in a later chapter, but morally and politically, fascism certainly repre- 
sents something fresh, rather than something reactionary. The theoty 
is that the risorgimento of the nineteenth century was successful in 
making the new Italy, but it failed to make the new Italians. In 1870 
Gorg’olini: Fascismo neUa *oita itdlimuty p. 7^*. 



AFTERTHOUGHTS 


84 

Massimo d’Azeglio made his famous remark: “ Italy is made, now we 
must make Italians.” The risorgimento has now been completed, the 
new Italians have appeared on the scene and proved their worth. 

There are, of course, more sophisticated versions of the philosophy of 
the revolution. Suckert, for example, makes fun of the idea that the old 
politicians, as d’Azeglio claimed, could “ make Italians.” The “ real ” 
Italians had never got into the politics of the old state, and these bour- 
geois politicians regarded them as Italia barbara. Now these “bar- 
barians,” the genuine old Italians, have asserted themselves, both against 
the old Italian state and against the whole so-called civilized world.®® 
This is not reaction; It Is counter-reformation. Massimo Rocca too 
sees in the fascist revolution a rescue of “ Catholic ” civilization, that is, 
of religion, idealism, the state and a productive economic order, from 
the “negative” tendencies (nihilism, scepticism, bolshevism, material- 
ism, intellectualism, etc.) which had been piling up their evil fruits for 
several generations, and which reached their most violent forms in 
the Italian aftermath of the war.®* 

Corradini, the veteran nationalist, regards the revolution as the in- 
evitable consequence of the war. The victory had made a new Italian 
nation, but the state tried to manage with the anachronistic residue of 
pre-war institutions, until fascism, itself a war product, burst the old 
fetters and established a state worthy of the new Italy. 

Another and a very popular version is that just as the French Revolu- 
tion marked the beginnings of the liberation of the middle classes, so 
the fascist revolution, the revolution, not of a class, but of the Italian 
people {popolo d’ltdia), marks the beginning of the liberation of peo- 
ples the world over. There are innumerable other variations on the 
theme, but the central idea Is always that of Italy’s renovation, rejuve- 
nation, risorgimento. Italy has been saved by her youth. 

“Whose was the battle?” Mussolini cries. 

“ Ours,” is the reply. 

“ Whose is the glory? ” 

“Ours!” 

“Whose is Italy? ” 

“Ours!” 

V. Curzio Suckert: Italia Barbara. Also Appendix No. 30. 

V. Massimo Rocca; Idee sul Fascimo, pp. 318 S. 



CHAPTER III 


THE FASCIST STATE 

I. Mussolini and His Parliament 

The fact was the revolution had barely begun. It will be remembered 
that Mussolini’s “ peaceful ” demands on Parliament had included five 
fascist portfolios in the cabinet. Now that the government had refused 
these demands and fascism had used force and gained a complete vic- 
tory, most fascists naturally expected a fascist government. Imagine 
their dismay next morning when they saw the following cabinet 
announced. 

Minister of Foreign Affairs — Mussolini. 

Minister. of the Interior — Mussolini, with Michele Bianchi as his 
Under-secretary. 

Minister of War — General Diaz. 

Minister of Navy — Admiral Thaon de Revel. 

Minister of National Economy — Teofilo Rossi, an industrialist of 
the Liberal Party retained from the Facta Cabinet. 

Minister of Finance — Alberto De Stefani, fascist, but politically be- 
longing to the Democratic group. 

Minister of Public Works — Camazza, Social-democrat. 

Minister of Public Instruction — Giovanni Gentile, Liberal. 

Minister of Labor — Cavazzoni, Popular Party. 

Minister of Agriculture — de Capitani, Liberal. 

Ministry of the Treasury — Tangorra, Liberal. 

Ministry of Justice — Orviglio, fascist. 

Minister of Liberated Territories— Giurati, fascist. 

Minister of Colonies — Federzoni, Nationalist. 

Postmaster General — Colonna di Cesaro, Liberal. 

Only three regular fascisti besides Mussolini! In the assignment of 
under-secretaries the fascisti fared a little better: fifteen Fascisti, six 
Popular Party, three Liberals, three Nationals, three Democrats. 

Of the effect of this announcement on the fasdst ranks we shall speak 
later. Its effect on Parliament, with which we are now concerned, 
was very soothing. It was evidently to be a government of coalition; a 



86 FAVORABLY IMPRESSED 

'' national coalition ” from which only the socialists had been excluded. 
It was, after all, not so much a revolution against Parliament and the 
“ liberal state ’’ as against socialism. It was Mussolini's revenge on the 
Socialist Party (and he told them so to their faces 0 for having refused 
his offer of coalition in the summer. 

After the initial excitement had died down a bit, on November 
i6, Mussolini presented himself and his government to Parlia- 
ment .2 Toward the Senate, the respectable resting place of the 
most respectable old men of the old Italy, he behaved with great 
deference; he apologized for the rudeness of his accession to power, 
promised to lead a strictly legal life thereafter, and proposed to con- 
duct a policy of peace abroad and of as much liberty as possible at 
home. 

His attitude toward the Chamber of Deputies was a marked contrast. 
He told them that he was performing an act of formal deference," 
for which he asked no special recognition." He continued: “To the 
melancholy zealots of superconstitutionalism I leave the task of making 
their more or less pitiful lamentations on recent events. I maintain 
that revolution has its rights. . . . With 300,000 youths fully armed, 
fully determined and almost mystically ready to act on any command of 
mine, I could have - . • made of this sordid, grey Assembly Hall a 
bivouac of squads; I could have kicked out Parliament and constructed 
a government exclusively of fascistu, I could have, — but I did not 
want to, at least not for the present.” Then, after outlining his pro- 
gram, he asked for unlimited powers for one year in order to make the 
necessary economies in the government. He promised to give complete 
account of his use of these powers to the Chamber, but he added that 
the “ Chamber must be aware of the fact that it is subject to being dis- 
solved within two days or two years." “ You must either accept na- 
tional sentiment or vanish." He closed his speech with the words: 
“ Gentlemen, do not throw any more vain prattle at the nation. Fifty- 
two members scheduled to speak on my remarks are too many. Rather 
let us get to work with clean hearts and alert minds to bring prosperity 
and greatness to our country. And God help me to bring this my 
arduous task to a victorious end." 

Many of the Honorable Gentlemen were shocked at being thus scolded 
in public by a youngster. Turati, the socialist leader, said he “ preferred 
an outright dictatorship to the ghost of a parliament Mussolini is trying 
to set up." Others took it good-naturedly, Giolitti, when he was asked 
to come to the rescue of the Chamber's dignity, is said to have replied 

^ V, Speech in the Chamber, November 17, 1922. 

^ See Appendix No. 16. 



FASCIST COALITION 


87 

simply that he thought the Chamber deserved the scolding. The Senate 
merely smiled at the “ lower ” house. In the press, and by the country 
in general the speech was not only approved but hailed with great en-' 
thusiasm. Thus isolated, the Chamber had but one choice. After 
48 of the 52 speakers had made their comments, it passed by 306 to 
1 16 votes a fascist resolution calling not exactly for a vote of confidence, 
for that would have implied resignation in case of an adverse vote, 
but for confidence in the destinies of the nation and acceptance of the 
program of the government.” That evening the demand for special 
powers was passed by a vote of 215 to 80. The opposition came almost 
exclusively from the socialists and communists. The constitution had 
been saved and Parliament had meekly accepted “ the national senti- 
ment,” rather than “ vanish.” 

It is impossible, however, to ascribe this vote and similar ones that 
followed merely to physical force and intimidation, nor even to the 
lack of public favor which Parliament enjoyed at the time. It was due 
in no small measure to the hypnotizing effect of Mussolini’s person, his 
bearing, his speech, his career. The very novelty of it all was refresh- 
ing; and no doubt many were curious to see what he could do if he were 
given the chance. Certainly Mussolini achieved an immediate personal 
victory over Parliament, which he did not entirely lose even during the 
dark days of 1924. He inspired confidence ” and no one seemed to 
take his threats of violence seriously. 

The collaboration which Mussolini magnanimously offered proved 
a bed of thorns. Senator Albertini had explicitly demanded that the 
coalition be bona fide and not merely a blind for imposing fascism on 
other parties. Mussolini’s reply was somewhat equivocal, for though 
he was anxious to avoid parliamentary hostility, he was forced by his 
fascist followers to preach the completeness of the fascist victory and 
the initiation of the fascist state. 

His chief worry was the attitude of the Popular Party, on which he 
was absolutely dependent for his parliamentary majority. Mussolini’s 
theatrical and unheard-of appeal for divine aid in his speech before the 
Chamber had been for the particular benefit of the Catholic center. 
Don Sturzo, the leader of the popularists, realizing his strategic power, 
began almost immediately making demands. He complained of the 
meagre representation granted to his party in the Mussolini government. 
He protested against the fascist disrespect for liberty and democracy 
and its boastful imperialism. But above all he complained of the 
continued aggression by fascisti against his own organizations. For 
while Mussolini was officially collaborating, both his party politicians 
and his syndicates were busy locally wresting control of the south 



88 ELECTORAL REFORM 

from the Popular Party organizations. Relations became increasingly 
strained. 

In April 1923, at Turin, the Popular Party held its annual convention. 
Opposition to the jascisti ran high and it was with difficulty that Don 
Sturzo was able to prevent an open secession. The convention finally 
drew up its conditions for a continuation of the collaboration, empha- 
sizing the maintenance of its independence as a party, the protection 
of individual liberty and the defense of religion and the Church against 
any and all attempts to corrupt it in the name of a pantheistic state 
and a deified nation.” Mussolini did not wait for an open break. One 
of the two popularist members of his Cabinet conveniently died and 
the other was asked to resign Immediately after the convention. 

Mussolini’s parliamentary position now became increasingly pre- 
carious; and he saw that he could not carry on much longer. Conse- 
quently he revived the demand for electoral reform and new elections. 
A Reform Commission was appointed, headed by Giolitti, and composed 
of members of various parties; but the most active member was the 
fascist deputy, Acerbo, who was entrusted with drafting the bill. The 
purpose of the reform was frankly stated to be to put an end to bloc 
government, to give one party a clear majority and thus to avoid the 
danger of deadlocks and squabbles which had haunted the pre-fascist 
government and now loomed up again. The coalition system was de- 
clared to be not merely a practical nuisance but also a theoretical anach- 
ronism. In his election speech, for example, Mussolini said, ^‘No 
more relations with the other parties. All parties must end, must fall. I 
want to see a panorama of ruins about me — the ruins of the other 
political forces — so that fascism may stand alone, gigantic and 
dominant.” ® 

The bill provided that whichever party should get the plurality of 
votes in the nation as a whole, should be given two thirds of all the seats. 
In each electoral district, accordingly, two thirds of the seats automati- 
cally would go to this party, regardless of the local vote, and the other 
third would be distributed among the other parties according to their 
local strength. With this daring proposal Mussolini now faced Parlia- 
ment. It received general support on the right and violent opposition 
on the left. The popularists were in a predicament; it was practically up 
to them to decide the issue. They charged that it violated the constitu- 
tion, a charge which was evaded by the countercharge of the fascisti 
that if it were defeated another and a more violent revolution would 
become necessary, which would certainly destroy the constitution. The 
popularists knew that the electoral reform would reduce their power, 

* V. GerarMa, November 1926, p. ^81. 



THE PLEBISCITE 


89 

but on the other hand, a revolution would not only put an end to their 
power absolutely, but they would be the greatest sufferers from the 
violence. In the midst of the conflict, Don Sturzo suddenly and mys- 
teriously resigned, called off by the Vatican, presumably through fas- 
cist pressure. The discouraged popularists now made the best of a bad 
situation. Some of them thought they might have a chance at the elec- 
tions, since they were then the strongest single group in Parliament. 
They offered an amendment to the effect that the leading party must 
poll at least forty per cent of the total vote in order to be assigned the 
two-thirds majority. This the fascisti accepted in principle but they 
modified the figures from forty per cent to twenty-five. The first vote 
on the general scheme, really the deciding vote was: 235 for, 139 against, 
79 not voting. Those not voting were the popularists. The outright 
opposition was largely socialist. It was a narrow escape. Shortly be- 
fore the final vote Mussolini himself took part in the debate. He 
wasted but few words on the popularists, condemning their equivocal 
position and challenging them to come out openly either for or against. 
Most of his speech was detailed answer to the socialist opposition. 
The final vote on July 21st was 223 for, and 123 against. It was fas- 
cism’s decisive victory. The old Parliament had voted its own end; 
the new one would be made to order. 

Counting on the traditional divisions among the right wing parties, 
the socialists and popularists seem to have nourished some hope 
that they might yet retrieve their misfortunes by the elections. But 
Mussolini took no chances. He laid the ground very carefully. Four 
or five men selected all the fascist candidates. They were selected from 
the various right wing parties as well as from the fascisti ranks, to form 
a ‘‘national list.” The list was constructed with special care in the 
south, where southern candidates were set up and where the “ national ” 
list successfully camouflaged fascisin. In localities where a heavy fas- 
cist plurality was expected, “ minority fascist ” lists were set up in 
addition, in order to capitalize their local strength to the utmost. Par- 
liament was officially dissolved in January, though on account of growing 
opposition Mussolini had already closed the Chamber in December, 
and elections were not held until April. The fascist militia was 
mobilized on election day and naturally acted more according to local 
needs than according to Mussolini’s orders to enforce an honest election. 
In many places the opposition parties were prevented from doing any 
public campaigning and were not even allowed to set up candidates for 
local offices. In short, the fascisti took abundant precautions, and made 
it their aim to get a clear fifty per cent of all votes cast. The result, 
however, came as a surprise even to them. The candidates of the 



90 PARLIAMENT FUNCTIONS 

national list ” received two thirds of the total vote. The rough figures 
are: 


Fascisti or National list (including minority fascist lists) 
Socialists (of all parties) 

Popularists 

Opposition liberals, etc. 


4,800,000 
over 1,000,000 

650.000 

600.000 


The popularlst and socialist vote was probably cut down unduly by 
the fact that because of the novel ballots, over 1,000,000 votes were 
declared invalid, most of which no doubt came from the illiterate masses. 
But even allowing abundantly for error, corruption and intimidation, 
the fascisti, that is, the national coalition,’^ could certainly claim far 
over their necessary 25 per cent and probably a substantial majority, 
and were hence entitled to regard the election as a plebescite of the 
nation ” and themselves as the people’s choice.” 

Even before the election Mussolini had been asked what he would 
do with his parliament when he got it. Would he make its subserviency 
a pretext for practically discarding it altogether? Was this merely an 
indirect way of realizing his anti-parliamentarianism? To this he had 
replied In his one big campaign speech: I’ll tell you what I propose to 
do with it: to make Parliament function so that it will function. Gentle- 
men, you must not take my anti-parliamentary utterances too literally. 
My personal antipathies and sympathies are well known, but I do not 
base my politics on them. When I spoke of ‘ paper games ’ and said 
that the ‘ legions are worth more than assemblies,’ I merely did it to 
put the brakes on electoral impatience a little. . . . And what will we do 
when we have Parliament functioning regularly? We shall make our 
reforms more perfect.”^ In other word’s, Mussolini’s idea was that 
this purified Parliament would take up the reforms drafted by the gov- 
ernment and give them a technical criticism and detailed examination 
before they became laws. He expected Parliament to be a body of 
political experts dispassionately weighing the merits of the details 
of the reforms proposed by the ministry. 

He was therefore rudely shocked when the minorities In the new 
Chamber, immediately after Its opening In May, began to protest the 
elections, charge illegal procedures and violence, criticise the fascist 
government in general and expound the programs of their respective 
parties — all in the good old-fashioned manner. The socialists, Amen- 
dola and Matteotti, were particularly irritating. The fascist deputies 
naturally replied in kind and the atmosphere became heated at once. 

^ Mussolini: La Nuova PoUtica, III, p. 33, 



MURDER OF MATTEOTTI 91 

On June 7 Mussolini appeared before the Chamber, visibly peeved. 
He said he would point out to them the only possible basis for pro- 
ceeding peacefully. He patiently went over the old ground for the 
benefit of each party in turn. Then finally he broke out: propose 

to make Parliament function. This need not surprise you. Fascism 
has always been electionistic, too much so; and now it would be ridicu- 
lous if being electionists, we would not accept the consequences of 
this our electionism, that is, parliament and legislative action. I have 
already told you that there would be no more decree-laws. What is 
needed now is to discuss the budgets, to accustom people to interpret 
figures; this is what constitutes genuine supervision. The government 
will present projects of laws to the Chamber, which will discuss them, 
amend them, approve them. That is how I understand the legislative 
function of the parliament of the future. . . • 

Now let us put the problem in concrete terms: what are you thinking 
of doing? How do you expect to get on (I am not speaking of the 
communists for they are not in question) — how do you expect to get on 
with these rigid platforms of yours that hold you tight? By an attempt 
at insurrection? But that is certainly unthinkable, you don’t think of 
that for a moment, it does not even pass through the cells of the ante- 
chambers of your brains; for you know that in twenty-four hours, or 
in twenty-four minutes, all would be over. . . . You certainly ought to 
undertake a little self-examination and ask yourselves: ‘What Is going 
to become of us ? ’ For it is Impossible to be jforever absent, to be always 
on the outside; something either good or ill must be done or said; in 
your own interest you must carry on either a positive or a negative col- 
laboration, for on that day on which you remain absent, indifferent, like 
Stilltes on your columns waiting for a miracle, you will be condemned 
to a perpetual exile from history.” ® 

Mussolini had the illusion that this speech had brought Parlia- 
ment to its senses, that it showed signs of being willing to get down 
to work and that the reply of Matteotti would be conciliating. But 
within a week all his pious hopes were blasted forever by the murder 
of Matteotti. 

The horror and indignation over the murder were soon buried under 
the general wave of disgust which followed on the revelations of the 
activities of the Fascist Party. The more of his dose friends Musso- 
lini sacrificed the greater grew the disgust. The socialists suddenly 
acquired an unheard-of repulsion and a moral indignation against vio- 
lence. Nothing would satisfy the opposition now; the regime was^ con- 
demned. It was demanded that Mussolini resign, that the militia be 

® Mussolini: La Nuo^a folitica. III, p. 15 9 * 



92 THE AVENTINE SECESSION 

abolished and that new elections on the basis of proportional representa- 
tion be held immediately. 

The revolt spread with alarming rapidity. What Mussolini feared 
most of all was defection on the part of the nationalists. To save him- 
self, he quickly reconstructed his cabinet; put Federzoni, a nationalist, 
in as Minister of the Interior, Rocco, a nationalist, as Minister of Justice, 
and even inserted several nationalist leaders into the Grand Council of 
the Party itself. He took occasion for a general house cleaning in the 
government, and appeared before Parliament with a cabinet that was at 
least clean and fresh. He promised a thorough reorganization of the 
Party and an immediate suppression of violence. But on the other 
hand, he refused point-blank to resign his office, to touch the militia, or 
to call new elections. He pleaded most fervently a return to legality, 
but he had no intention of reviving the parliamentary coalition “ nor- 
malcy ” which the opposition wanted. 

Hereupon most of the opposition absented itself from the Chamber, 
actually adopting the policy which Mussolini but a few days previously 
had characterized as preposterous. A hall was hired on the Aventine 
Hill, where headquarters were established and where the campaign of 
words and ink against fascism was continued. 

Mussolini was seriously embarrassed by this move. Unwilling to 
face the empty seats in the House of Parliament, he assembled his faith- 
ful rump of about 350 deputies in the nearby Palazzo Venezia and ex- 
plained the situation to them as follows: 

As for dissolving the Chamber, I ask-you who are deputies and who 
feel yourselves regularly elected by the Italian people, I ask you if you 
intend to withdraw, to renounce your delegated office, to hand in your 
resignations to the nation, I would almost say to your own consciences. 
It goes without saying that this is no time in which to speak of elections 
and that it is an idea as grotesque as it is catastrophic to want to plunge 
the masses of the nation, who need quiet, calm and work, back into an 
electoral battle, which, given the present situation, would be of very 
uncertain issue. Therefore, to all the demands of the opposition, 
whether they are formulated by the party organizations in the country, 
or whether they come tomorrow from the parliamentary representatives 
of these parties, I believe the government and the majority can only 
reply with a firm unconditional solemn NO.” ... The exodus, the 
secession of the opposition is a fact. Is this secession temporary? Is it 
permanent? That is the whole point and the whole delicacy of the 
situation. If the secession is temporary, the situation may clear up. 
If, on the other hand, the secession should be permanent, then the 
problem is put in new and relatively more serious terms. The problem 



FASCISM STANDS ALONE 93 

which we must then face Is whether or not Parliament can function with 
the majority deprived of the presence of the minority. This much is 
certain, that the majority must not pay l^e penalty for the minority. 
If tomorrow some minority group or other should withdraw from the 
Aventine, would that fact suffice to reestablish the functioning of the 
Chamber? ... If the opposition should take account of their respon- 
sibility and should return to the Chamber and give us their work of 
criticism, of surveillance and of opposition, even though it be rancorous, 
sectarian and prejudiced, we must endure, tolerate and at times even 
encourage it, since opposition which brings to light certain facts and 
conditions can be of the greatest usefulness; if this should happen, then 
we could say that the crisis was overcome.” ® 

By July 22, Mussolini’s attitude towards the Aventine Secession had 
changed somewhat. He addressed the faithful gathered again in the 
Palazzo Venezia, as follows : The more the opposition swells the more 
it reveals its dropsy and impotence, and the nausea at the prolonged 
promiscuity becomes more acute. That the pile of the opposition ap- 
pears huge, there Is no doubt. There are in Italy at least ten anti-fascist 
parties and six or seven anti-fascist sects or groups. Let us line them up 
in single file. Some one may perhaps be growing proud of finding him- 
self in so numerous a company — anarchists, communists, maximalists, 
unitary socialists, republicans, popularists, social-democrats, constitu- 
tional democrats, Peasant Party, the Sardinian and Lucan Party of 
action. We pass by the various local spiritual unions in the south; then 
the groups of Free Italy, For Country and Liberty, The Liberal Revo- 
lution, to say nothing of all the dissident more-or-less fascistL To all 
these parties and groups we must add the hosts of Freemasonry, which 
have officially declared war on the fascist regime. Very well ! I think 
that it should be Italian fascism’s greatest boast to have arrayed against 
itself so numerous a phalanx of enemies. Fascism must represent an 
absolutely original element in Italian life, to be made the object of so 
imposing an hostility ... of this great, and at bottom grotesque, anti- 
fascist army.” ^ 

Mussolini had evidently got over his worst scare and was already be- 
coming reconciled to a parliament which did not function.” He began 
to think less in terms of collaboration and more in terms of the Revolu- 
tion. When the Aventine opposition insisted on their cry of normaliza- 
tion,” that only a change of regime would satisfy them, Mussolini began 
to take the offensive and to plan ways of getting rid of the parliamentary 
nuisance once and for all. 

^ Mussolini: La Nuova Political III, pp. 197-200. 

^ Mussolini: La Nuova PoUttca^ III, pp. 203—4. 



94 CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM 

In August the Grand Council of the Fascist Party appointed a 
Constitutional Commission, which was to go over the whole range 
of vesing problems and propose a way out. The Commission was 
composed of fifteen members, ^^five Senators, five Deputies, and five 
Scholars.^’ Its chairman was Giovanni Gentile. These Solons 
as they came to be called, outstanding scholars and respected Uni- 
versity professors, almost all of them men who enjoyed universal re- 
spect and confidence, were charged by Mussolini with the task of 
studying: 

I. Relations between the executive and legislative powers. 2. The 
State and the press. 3. The State and institutions of credit. 4. The 
State and secret societies, 5. The State and international parties. 6. 
The State and syndicates. 

As a matter of fact the Commission confined itself to the first and last 
of these problems. If Mussolini had hopes that this move would help 
pacify the Aventine opposition, he miscalculated badly. It was the last 
straw for them: the constitution was being attacked openly. And the 
mere mention of press, banks, secret societies, and international 
parties in connection with reform was enough to make them suspect 
the worst. To cap it all, the Commission held its first meeting on 
October 28, the anniversary of the March on Rome. It was useless for 
Gentile to explain that the demand for reform was itself traditional and 
“ normal ’’ and that fascism was merely attempting to carry on the work 
of the risorgimento? The attacks grew more violent. Some of the 
liberals, who remained loyal to the majority bloc, now deserted to the 
opposition, Salandra, Orlando and Giolitti among them. Giolitti wanted 
to know: Whose regime is this, anyway!” 

Mussolini put on a bold front. He opened Parliament on schedule 
time, November 12, and declared the ^‘majority Parliament” could 
function perfectly well without an opposition. He entered into no 
discussions or bargains with the Aventine group, told them they could 
surrender unconditionally whenever they got ready. Meanwhile he 
carried on with his approximately 300 deputies, plus a handful of com- 
munists, who of course always go where they can cause the most dis- 
turbance. Before this rump Parliament Mussolini was constitutional 
in the extreme. He submitted for its ratification all the decree-laws 
which he had put into effect illegally, he gave It an unusually detailed 
account of his government, and he allowed it to discuss and approve each 
minister’s budget in detail, a practice which had fallen into disuse for 
the last twelve years. He introduced an electoral reform bill, which 
removed the last vestiges of proportional representation, and a bill 
® V. Gentile, Che cosa e il fmcismo, pp. 199 Also Appendix No. 29. 



WAR ON THE PRESS 


95 

giving women the vote in local elections. These “ olive branches ” he 
hoped might tempt the Aventine. 

But in the meantime the violent press campaign had led to ^‘^Inci- 
dents ” on both sides. In September CasalinI, a prominent fascist syn- 
dicalist, had been murdered by a socialist to avenge the Matteotti mur- 
der. Mussolini at the time had given strict orders against reprisals, 
and had adopted an attitude of relief, hoping that now “ accounts were 
square.” But he was unable to keep either the opposition or his 
own squads in check. Though he preached daily the doctrine that 
violence was ended, the papers were full of evidence to the contrary. 
On top of it all came the publication on December 27th, of Rossi’s 
“Memorial”^ which held Mussolini morally responsible for much of 
the violence. 

The opposition was now irreconcilable, and Its struggle became more 
desperate as it became more hopeless. Mussolini was forced to give 
up attempts at pacification and to declare war. On January 3 he 
launched a violent attack on the Aventine, read the list of recent fascist 
“ martyrs ” and declared that communism was getting the upper hand 
in the opposition. He held up the spectre of the red peril and asserted 
that if he should let go of the government, he would undoubtedly have 
communist successors.^® With these weak apologies, he then announced 
that within 48 hours the opposition would be crushed by force. From 
January 3, 1925, fascism and only fascism would govern Italy! 

The immediate measures which followed the declaration of January 3, 
1925, were naturally directed against the most conspicuous centers of 
opposition, first of all the press. The socialist and communist press 
had already been partly muzzled by the decrees of July 1924 which had 
given prefects power. But these decrees had not been enforced rigor- 
ously. On December 31, that is almost immediately after the publica- 
tion of the Rossi Memorial, Federzoni sent a circular to all prefects 
commanding rigid enforcement. In general the unscrupulous partisan 
press, which is ridiculously violent in Italy, naturally fell first and was 
not much lamented. In November 1925, after the Zaniboni affair, such 
papers as the Unita, Giustizidj Avanti, and the Voce Repubblkana were 
suppressed. Then came the more delicate task of muzzling the big liberal 
papers, which not only enjoyed a tremendous prestige but which by 
years of persistent effort had built up an unusual independence and 
honesty. The muzzling had to be gradual. Only violent attacks were 
punished at first. General defenses of " liberty ” were still permitted 
and Mussolini made it a point to argue that where liberty is still de- 

® See Append!:?*: No. 19. 

V. Mnssolini : La Nuova Political III, pp. 4^3, 480 ff. 



96 WAR ON MASONRY 

fended, liberty still exists. Then more energetic measures became 
necessary. Senator Albertini’s CoTtiere della Seta of Milan and the 
Giomale dltalia of Rome had to be suspended for a short time while 
the editors ''reorganized.’’ The Secolo was bought outright and its 
liberal editors, among them Ferrero, were retired. To make censorship 
more systematic, a body of " competent men ” was appointed to approve 
manuscripts on political issues and still later all “ copy ” whatsoever on 
any subject had to be approved by fascist officials. In November 1926 
the Mondo, the Stampa and several other remaining opposition papers 
were suppressed. But all except the Mondo have since then been 
" fascisticized.” Opposition books were suppressed and publishing 
houses that persisted in publishing them were punished. Of the opposi- 
tion magazines even the mildest have disappeared, as, for example, the 
Republican Critica Politica. The editor of a leading humorous paper, 
the Becco Giallo (yellow beak), whose political satire was exceptionally 
keen and influential, was beaten by a band of fascisti; whereupon the 
sheet apjJeared with a padlock on the beak of the bird on the cover 
page. The editor’s life was then threatened and the paper stopped 
publication. A limited amount of criticism is still allowed in the press 
provided it is " loyal ” and not directed against Mussolini personally. 
A critical discussion of the technical merits of a concrete issue is wel- 
come, but the democratic luxury, eulogistically called public opinion, is 
something which fascism thinks it can easily live without. Italy, it 
claims, is too poor to be able to afford the continual nervous strain and 
frittering away of energy. The formula is: criticism is allowed, but 
not opposition. 

The Masonic Orders were another serious problem. They were firmly 
intrenched among the liberal politicians and to all intents and purposes 
acted like a political club. Being international, they were in a 
position to bring considerable foreign pressure to bear on the govern- 
ment. In addition to their political activities they were, of course, 
objectionable because of their internationalism, their strong French 
influences, and their democratic, agnostic and anti-clerical principles. 
The problem was somewhat complicated by the fact that a number 
of prominent fascisti were members, and that there was a rivalry be- 
tween two lodges. The Scottish Rite, with headquarters in the Piazza 
Gesu, was not condemned as early as the Grand Orient of the Palazzo 
Giustiniano. Shortly before the Matteotti affair Mussolini had given 
public recognition to the Grand Master of the Scottish Rite and many 
fascisti wanted to save it for personal reasons. But discrimination was 
difficult, and finally all secret associations were condemned en masse. 
After the Zaniboni attack on Mussolini, November 4, 1925, in which 



THE OPPOSITION VANISHES 


97 

General Capello and other Masons were involved, the Grand Master 
Torrigiani was arrested and later banished for five years. 

While these things were transpiring at headquarters, local fascist 
organizations interpreted the declaration of January 3 as a permis- 
sion to resume violence. Systematic inquisitions and persecutions of 
the more violent opposition organizations, especially the Italia Libera, 
were begun. Many opposition leaders were attacked In person or their 
property destroyed. Nitti, Orlando and a considerable following were 
forced to flee the country. In Florence and Pisa there were exception- 
ally violent house cleanings. The Bishop of Pisa telegraphed to Rome 
as follows: So last night Pisa was normalized! As a bishop I wept; as 
an Italian I blushed. . . . Have pity on our country I ” In Florence, 
to take one of the most serious cases, October 2, 1925, long after the 
worst crisis, the local fascist chief, LIporinI, tried by threats of violence 
to force an old man named Bandinelli, a Freemason, to reveal the names 
of his Masonic brothers. After some arguments ’’ and threats, Bandi- 
nelli shot the fascist. Thereupon the fascia terrorized the whole town for 
several days and nights, killing seven, among them a socialist ex-deputy, 
without further provocation and wounding scores in street riots. Each 
attempt on the life of Mussolini was naturally made the occasion for 
riots and for violence on whatever prominent opposition members still 
happened to be available. 

A law was passed which deprived anti-fascist lawyers of their licenses 
to practice. Anti-fascist professors were made subject to dismissal, 
though very few have actually been dismissed to date. And in general 
the opposition was deprived of all personal and public rights. The 
culmination of the movement came in November 1926, after another 
attempt on Mussolini’s life, when the Law for the Defense of the 
State” was passed. It provided the institution of the death penalty 
for attacks on the life or liberty of King, Queen, Crown Prince, or Prime 
Minister” (a provision which Farinacci had recommended a year and 
a half previously and which others wanted to extend to the opposition 
generally), ^^purification” of the bureaucracy from anti-fascist ele- 
ments, and abolition of all parties and journals which menaced the pub- 
lic order.” 

The Italia Libera and Socialist Party had already been abolished, and 
the others had been reduced to Inaction. The abolition of all parties at 
this time was therefore largely formal, as was also the definite ending of 
the Aventine Secession. On January 16, 1926, profiting by the memorial 
session following on the death of the Queen Mother, a number of popu- 
larist deputies of the Aventine had tried to return to the Chamber. 
They had been forcibly expelled, and the next day Mussolim had justi- 



98 THE RUMP FUNCTIONS ADMIRABLY 

fied the expulsion. Only an absolute surrender to fascism, he said, 
could make re-entry possible for any member of the Aventine. In 
November Bocconi,- a socialist deputy, who had remained in Parliament, 
was confronted in one of the lobbies by a fascist deputy and told “ not 
to allow himself to be seen around the Chamber again.” In December, 
even before voting the new Law for the Defense of the State, the 
Chamber formally deprived the 125 remaining members of the Aventine 
of their seats. 

A thoroughgoing, rather than judicial imprisonment of suspicious 
persons now ensued. In the next few months, as Mussolini reported 
in May, 1500 “ordinary low criminals ” and 700 communists and politi- 
cal prisoners were sent to the islands, that is, were exiled. Each of 
these exiles receives ten lire a day toward his support. Many opposition 
members are faring even worse, for they are not allowed to leave the 
country and can get no employment inside the country. Filippo Turati 
and Arturo Labriola have recently escaped to France, but a large 
number of other opposition leaders are not merely prisoners, continually 
watched by fascist squads, but practically hostages, held in case anything 
should happen to Mussolini. 

There was now no more trouble with Parliament. Mussolini was de- 
lighted with the way in which the Chamber “ functioned.” At the fas- 
cist Congress in June 1925 he boasted: “ We have subdued parliamen- 
tarianism! The Chamber no longer affords the nauseating spectacle 
that it had afforded for some time. It discusses, it approves, it legislates, 
which is just what a le^slative assembly ought to do.” 

He was no less delighted with the Senate, whose behavior had been 
truly exemplary. Discussion was a bit more lively in the Senate and 
the opposition more evident, but when it came to voting there was always 
an overwhelming majority for the government. The Aventine deputies, 
who looked to the Senate as the only remaining champion of liberty and 
the liberal state, had little ground for their hopes. The Senate had at 
last come into its own! Mussolini explained: “ It is we of the younger 
generation who have grasped the importance of the Senate and have 
restored it to its ancient splendor. The Senate "mil approve fascist laws; 
first of all because the government has a majority in it, secondly because 
we shall defend it, and thirdly because the Senate with its high sense of 
patriotism will not want to assume the responsibility of a dispute which 
would lead to a crisis of the most serious consequences.” 

’■i Mussolini: Discorsi del 1925, p. 104. 



JUDICIAL REFORMS 


99 


//. Foundations of the Fascist State 

The government was now free to carry out those larger reforms which 
were to lay the basis for the fascist state. Even before the Matteotti 
affair the beginnings had been made. By the liberal use of decrees, the 
executive power of the government had obtained considerable freedom. 
The courts offered some resistance, refusing to sanction over 500 of these 
decrees. The government evaded this by registering them ^^tem- 
porarily ’’ and then getting busy on judicial reform.” 

There was in Italy a supreme court of administrative justice, called 
the Fourth Session of the Council of State, an institution which had been 
built up by Crispi and Spaventa and of which Italian liberalism was par- 
ticularly proud, for it constituted a judicial check even on the ad- 
ministrative acts of the government and was therefore in a sense a 
sovereign authority superior to the government. Naturally such an 
institution was inconsistent both with the theory and with the practice 
of fascist government. In January 1924 the Fourth Session was fused 
with the Third, “ in order to give administrative jurisdiction the effi- 
ciency which it lacked and also to give a greater simplification, acceler- 
ation and economy to its judgments.” 

This measure was supplemented by a very genuine unification of the 
Courts of Cassation (Supreme Court), a reform which had often been 
attempted but had been blocked by local jealousies in Parliament. A 
thoroughgoing reform of the various codes is also in process, under 
the direction of Alfredo Rocco. Its aim is not merely to codify and 
simplify existing law, and thus to reduce the notoriously enormous com- 
plexity and waste in Italian court procedure, but also to introduce 
fascist principles into the law, especially into the penal codes, marriage 
and divorce law, collective contracts, etc. 

The reform of the bureaucracy had also been undertaken early. Min- 
istries were consolidated where possible and the number of employees 
reduced (except in the ministries of the Interior and Foreign Affairs!) 
and an attempt made to define more clearly and to correlate the respec- 
tive functions of officials. The aim of the reform was to give concrete 
embodiment to the idea of hierarchy, that organic unity of diverse func- 
tions, which according to Mussolini constitutes the very essence of 
the state. 

The more organic constitutional reforms were begun immediately 
after the declaration of January 3, 1925, The Commission of Solons ” 
was reorganized at once. It was appointed by Royal Decree, instead 

Miassolini: La Nuova Foliticay II, p. 175. 



100 


LOCAL ADMINISTRATION 


of by the Party as previously; it was enlarged to i8 members and was 
encouraged to proceed with its drafting of the reforms necessary to 
transform Italy into a “ corporate state.” Of this corporate ” state 
more in our next chapter. The more immediate parliamentary reforms 
suggested by the Commission amounted to little more than a learned 
sanctioning of what had already transpired. The evils of Parliament’s 
supremacy were rehearsed and the cults and myths of elections and 
universal suffrage ” were exposed.^® The executive power, it concluded, 
must be made dependent more on the Crown and less on Parliament and 
all administrative functions of Parliament must be abolished. 

All this had already been done. Nevertheless the Report had its value 
in encouraging the government to go still further. 

A decree was now passed by which the Prime Minister was made 
responsible solely to the King; the formation of the Cabinet was re- 
moved from the squabbles of parliamentary parties (November 1925); 
the Executive Power was empowered to make decrees with the force 
of laws {emanare norme giuridicke) and in cases of emergency to make 
laws themselves, (January 31, 1926). 

In November 1926, partly as a consequence of the scandals on the 
French border, partly because of the dictatorial law of National Se- 
curity which the Minister of the Interior would be called upon to en- 
force, Federzoni retired to the Ministry of Colonies, and Mussolini 
himself, assisted by his private secretary ” Suardo, became Minister 
of the Interior. 

The same system was carried into local administration. We have 
already mentioned some of the problems which had arisen during the 
war and out of the conflict between the local administrations of the 
northern cities and the national government. The situation In the south 
was even worse, where local elections developed into family feuds and 
where municipal administration was conducted as a private business, 
for private interests. Around Palermo and in other parts of Sicily the 
Maffia clan reigned supreme. The local fascist forces had changed the 
personnel but not the system. In some places a fascist ras carried on 
the work of the old boss, and in others the fascio as a whole undertook 
a paternalistic regulation of all the aflFaIrs of the community. In small 
communities especially responsibility was difficult to locate and finances 
were mal-administered, to say the least. All this was to be changed 
now. The powers of the prefects were extended. In November 1925, 
centrally appointed podesta and consults TJiufticipali were substituted’ 
for the elective Mayors and municipal councils. 

In August 1926, ninety-five sub-prefectures were abolished, both be- 

V. Appendix No, zz. 



DEMOCRACY, ITALY’S SCAPEGOAT loi 

cause the sub-prefects were dif&cult to control directly from the central 
government, and because they were traditionally leaders in local elec- 
toral politics. A few months later seventeen new provinces were cre- 
ated, among them the newly “ redeemed ” territories. The province 
rather than the municipality now became the chief organ of local gov- 
ernment, and provincial administration was controlled directly by 
Rome. Thus local government was brought under the complete and 
direct authority of the central government. 

The hierarchy was now complete. Mussolini became practically dic- 
tator and the fascist party the only recognized political body in the land. 

Anyone who opposes fascism now is obviously an enemy of his 
country and to be treated as such. For, so the theory goes, just as the 
Tisorgimento and the war had transformed the Italian people into a 
nation, into an Indivisible spiritual unity, so fascism has transformed 
this nation into a state, that Is, it has given the Inner unity a material 
embodiment. Hence whoever attacks fascism strikes a blow at the life 
of the nation. Corradini sums it all up by saying: “ Historically speak- 
ing there is no opposition, but merely a few left-over parties and poli- 
ticians who delude themselves into believing that they are opposing 
fascism.” 

///. The Theory of the Fascist State 

The ease with which fascisti regard themselves as the true representa- 
tives and interpreters of the nation is intelligible only after an examina- 
tion of the theories and general ideas which accompanied these events, 
and which dominate the fascist imagination. For though the fascisti are 
professedly men of action, not of thought, their action was facilitated 
by a philosophy. They were fortunate in not being forced to create 
a whole philosophy afresh; they were able to pick up congenial ideas 
from a number of sources. 

Anti-democratic theories were to be found In abundance. Democracy 
in fact was the intellectual scapegoat on which all sins had been loaded. 
Democratic institutions were a recent French importation” and had 
found little real foothold in Italy either in theory or in practice. The 
great mass of the people had no public political education and had 
never become interested in elections. A large part of them until re- 
cently were prevented by law or by the Pope from participating in 
politics, but even had they been free to do so, only a small percentage 
would have made use of the opportunity. At most, they participated in 
local politics, for to this day among large masses of the peasants, es- 
pecially in the south, Italy is little more than a geographical expression. 

Corradini: fasclmto Vita p. 9, 



102 


NATIONALIST THEORY 


For a brief time during the war, democracy was on everyone^s lips. 
But it was lip service to a temporary foreign idol, Woodrow Wilson; 
and when he fell, democracy sank to lower estate than ever. Tradi- 
tionally the Italian democrats were a small bourgeois group. It was 
this bourgeois minority who led the risorgimento, who became republi- 
cans, who clamored for a constitution and who founded the liberalistic 
tradition. The socialists, therefore, began attacking Italian democracy 
as the most obvious starting point in the class struggle. The nation- 
alists in their turn condemned democracy for its weakness, its stupidities 
and mediocrities, its enslavement before the unthinking masses, its 
foreignness, etc. Croce, Gentile and the idealistic school had swept 
the field of philosophy clean of the remnants of positivism and ration- 
alism with which democracy was affiliated. These idealists opposed it 
for Its individualism, its scepticism, and its materialism. The Catholics 
did likewise for similar reasons. Political scientists, sociologists and 
economists expounded the weaknesses and failures of democratic gov- 
ernment; at their head was Vilfredo Pareto,^® a scholar of universal 
reputation and a man who, by the way, had influenced Mussolini directly 
during his studies in Switzerland. Lastly the fascisti came along with 
their anti-democracy. In fact they took this stand not so much because 
democracy was really their prime enemy in practice, for it was not, but 
because they wanted something unpopular to attack ! 

The chief sources of anti-democratic theory on which fascism drew 
were three: the nationalists, the idealists and what for want of a better 
name we may call the Dante-Machiavelli tradition. These three streams, 
coming the first from the north, the second from the south and the third 
from the past, met In fascism and in the New Rome.’’ 

The nationalists, whose chief theorizers are Enrico Corradlni, Fran- 
cesco Coppola, Alfredo Rocco, Federzoni, Forges-Davanzati and 
Maraviglia, received their inspiration largely from French sources, 
from Maurras and Sorel, and thus indirectly from De Maistre and 
De Bonald. We have already discussed in the first chapter the origins 
and prime motives of the nationalist movement, its preoccupation 
with foreign policy and with the greatness ” of Italy in the face of 
other nations. But these interests led the nationalists to a new con- 
ception of national politics as well. They were anti-parliament from 
the start and refused to call themselves a “party”; they were an 
association. 

The notion that a state can build upon a mere aggregate of individuals 
is the fundamental fallacy of democratic theory, according to the nation- 
alists. Individuals thus atomistically conceived remain atomic individ- 
V. Pareto: Tistamento Politico^ in Gionmle EconomkOj 1923. 



NATIONALIST THEORY 


103 

uals and the state on such a basis must always appear as an artificial 
construction, an intruder, an enemy to the rights of man. Rousseau’s 
attempt to construct a general will by a mathematical summation of 
particular wills, together with the whole machinery of elections to which 
this notion led in practice, perpetuates this fundamental fallacy. It is 
therefore not surprising that democracy, which at best and in its primary 
sense is a rule of the majority, has turned out to be a constant bickering 
of minorities for power. The fictitious people and so-called public opin- 
ion turned out to be really a number of parties, each representing certain 
special interests, bargaining with each other for power, and what was 
supposed to be a government by representatives of the people turned 
out to be party government. Democracy, therefore, is but the organ- 
ized struggle of particular groups and not a government at all. Or, as 
Corradini puts it, Parliament ended up by being a synthesis of two 
corrupting forces; it combined the self-seeking of the bourgeoisie and 
the class struggle of the socialists into a new profession, that of the par- 
liamentary politician.^® 

The politics of true government, as opposed to this politics of con- 
flict, must be based on a more organic conception of society. This is 
found in the idea of the nation as a living ideal unity. And it was this 
unity that the nationalists claimed to represent. The Nationalist As- 
sociation ” regarded itself as being on an entirely different plane from 
parliamentary parties, in that it represented no particular clientele nor 
class, and disbelieved in the whole democratic machinery. It stood for 
the unity of the nation and for the monarchy as the symbol of that 
unity. The nationalists believe in popular sovereignty, they say, but in 
a different sense, that is, in the sovereignty of the people as a collective 
whole over any individual member or group of members- A people 
in so far as it regards itself as a unity or a nation, has interests, values 
and aims which transcend all the particular interests of its individual 
members or subordinate groups. Therefore its government can not 
be made up of representatives of particular interests but must be com- 
posed of those elites, those spiritual leaders of the nation, who are 
capable of grasping and pursuing the good of the whole. No amount 
of elections and parties can produce such a government, except by sheer 
accident. The ever recurring demands by parliamentary govern- 
ments for extraordinary powers in time of crisis are pointed to 
as evidence that parliamentary legislation^ is a luxury which the 
nation in its normal lethargy is willing to pay for, but which it discards 
whenever the pinch of necessity demands intelligence and efficiency* 
An assembly of parties may be a parla-ment^ but by its very nature 
V. E. Corradini; Fascismo VUa d^ltaUa, See Appendix No. 28, 



104 NATIONALIST THEORY 

It can never be a government. Government I'equires unity. A govern- 
ment may not last long, but while It lasts It must have complete power. 
A series of bosses Is preferable to a continual debate ! 

The crux of the theory, however, in its opposition to democracy con- 
cerns not so much the method of conducting si government, as the rela- 
tions which should obtain between governme it and citizen. Since the 
state is but the embodiment of the ideal unity of its members, each citi- 
zen must be completely at the disposal of thi‘ state. Nothing for the 
Individual; everything for Italy! This implies that the individual 
citizen should be able to find his own happineiss and realization In and 
through his national state. If he fails it is because he is not really a part 
of the nation. Duty, discipline and sacrifice must bind the citizen to 
the state. The state, not its individual citizens, must be free. The state 
must have rights and the citizen duties."/'' In place of democracy must 
come hierarchy (gerarchia), the ordered system of social functions. 
The democratic representation of classes and class interests must give 
place to a “ popular aristocracy,^’ for the people as an ideal cultural 
entity is by nature aristocratic. 

The old liberal state, they say, might have led to such a conception had 
it developed its notion of free citizenship as a public duty in pursuit 
of the general interest; but instead It degenerated into the class rule 
of private interests, the bourgeoisie hiding under the banner of the right 
or privilege of universal suffrage, as the means whereby each citizen 
can express his own particular interests. The socialist state on the other 
hand is not only in practice but also in theory opposed to this nation- 
alistic conception, for it is based on internal class struggle and overlooks 
or even denies the interests of the nation as a whole. Furthermore so- 
cialism is materialistic and appeals to the masses on the basis of indi- 
vidual gain, whereas nationalism is idealistic and calls the masses to 
personal sacrifices for the national interests. 

Mussolini personally gave the Idea of hierarchy a much more promi- 
nent role than it has among nationalists. He seems to have come by 
this conception through military channels. His earliest ideas of political 
reconstruction after the war were all modelled on army patterns. Inter- 
ventionism had given a military turn to all of Mussolini’s thinking and 
he imagined that the soldiers, to whom he addressed himself first of all, 
would also think in these terms. Gradually, however, as the war re- 
ceded, he gave the idea a moralistic and idealistic form. For example, 
shortly after his advent to power, he said: “The work of fifty years 
of history and above all the war have made a nation out of the Italians. 
The historic task that awaits us is to make this nation into a national 
state. This is a moral idea that finds embodiment in a system of respon- 



IDEALIST THEORY 105 

sible hierarchies, whose members from the highest to the lowest feel 
the pride and privilege of doing their particular duty. . . . Our one aim 
must be the erection of this single, unified being, the nation-state, the 
sole bearer of the whole history, the whole future and the whole power 
of the Italian people.” 

The idealists came to ‘much the same conclusion though for differ- 
ent reasons. Politically speaking, Italian idealism represented an at- 
tempt to give a spiritual meaning to the secular institutions of the 
nation. The Catholic tradition regarded Italian politics as the devil 
incarnate. Gioberti’s heroic effort to reconcile church and state failed. 
But two idealists, Francesco De Sanctis and Silvio Spaventa, gave to 
secular politics and culture the halo which the church denied them. De 
Sanctis is significant primarily because he introduced Hegel into Italy 
and thus laid the foundations for the modern idealistic school. As a 
political prisoner In the old castle at Naples, he translated HegeFs Logic^ 
and then during his exile led the revival of literary criticism on the basis 
of an idealistic esthetics. During the sixties he took an active part in 
the politics of the new Italian State, He was one of the first to raise 
his voice of protest against the cliques of politicians and the maneu- 
vers of special interests, which made their appearance in Parliament. In 
the interests of more dignified and idealistic politics he joined the strug- 
gling Left against the heavily intrenched sordid Right. But later, when 
he saw that the Left proved to be no better than the old Right, he re- 
joined the Right and laid the foundations for a new right-wing nucleus of 
idealistic patriots, who refused to yield to demagogy and corruption, and 
who continued to uphold the romantic political idealism which the n- 
soTgimento had inspired In them. This tradition was continued by Silvio 
Spaventa, who upheld the ideal of the strong, omnicompetent state in 
the face of both liberals and clericals.^® His “ adoration of the state ” 
became a central theme of debate, and the rallying cry for those forces 
which wished to strengthen the young and none too strong Italian 
national government. It was this noble Right ” which is supposed to 
have passed on the idealism of the risorgimento to the jascisti and it was 
this tradition that the fascist Right of the Chamber of Deputies tried to 
revive. 

Benedetto Croce, the greatest exponent of Italian idealism, was never 
primarily interested in politics and when he did turn to political phi- 
losophy he made some innovations in the direction of liberalism and 
socialism. Of the two great realms of social life which he distinguishes, 
the economic and the moral, he assigns the state to the former. Not 

Mussolini: PofoU) d^Ualmy January 2, 1923. 

V. Silvio Spaventa: PoUtica deUa Destra. 



io6 


IDEALIST THEORY 


that all states always are merely economic arrangements, but he thinks 
that under modern conditions of culture, the ideal of the Kulturstaat is 
anachronistic. The modern state is as a matter of fact, he says, largely 
preoccupied with the material basis of social life, and ideally too It is 
just as well that the moral realm, that is, science, religion, art, etc., be left 
free and open. In economic and material affairs order and authority 
may be necessary, but in the realm of the spirit, freedom must reign. 
Having revolted against the spiritual authority of the church, Croce is 
not inclined to submit to a monarchy in morals. 

But Giovanni Gentile came to the rescue of the Kulturstaat. Reacting 
against individualistic liberalism, he revived the more orthodox Hege- 
lian conception of the state, the stato etico, as he calls it. But he was 
careful to make it appear to be a strictly Italian doctrine. In his early 
articles In Politica on the subject, he made much of Gioberti, later he 
seized upon Mazzini, whom he tried to free of his republicanism and 
positivism and to erect into an idealist. He emphasized especially the 
Mazzinian notion of the religious unity of the people {Dio e popolo) and 
the close connection between thought and action during the risorgimento. 
This doctrine he preached first as the new liberalism,’’ and when fas- 
cism came along he tried to reconcile liberalism and fascism; but both 
liberals and fascists were suspicious of this all too Hegelian synthesis and 
after the Aventine Secession Gentile was forced to abandon the at- 
tempted reconciliation and to proclaim himself a straight fascist. 

Gentile is now the official fascist apologist for liberty. The more 
ordinary type of fascist will frankly admit that he does not believe 
in liberty;^® that liberty has long since become a meaningless term; 
and worse, that the goddess of liberty is invoked religiously In order to 
conceal men’s real aims. At least in the present crisis, they say, liberty 
would be dangerous. Italy has had enough of liberty for a while; what 
it needs now is Iaw.-° Or, as Suckert suggests, in Italy liberty had be- 
come but one more thing to fight about. Mussolini too had no illusions 
about the value of freedom of speech. When Parliament was reopened 
in 1923, he told the Chamber that the increase of violence at that time 
was directly traceable to the opening of Parliament. Parliamentary 
speeches excited the people and hence disturbed the peace. The country 
could never settle down so long as there was boundless liberty to orate 
in parliament and incessant opportunity to write incendiary editorials in 
the press. No one is free to think when every one raves about liberty. 
In his realistic moments Mussolini points out that the mass of the 
Italian people at this particular time neither need nor want liberty. 

V. Farinacci in Appendix No. 20. 

V. Massimo Rocca: Idee sal FascismOy pp. 195 fE. 



IDEALIST THEORY 


107 

They want peace, work, bread, roads and water, and they are willing to 
work for these things. It is only certain bourgeois politicians who cry 
for liberty by profession, and certain socialist politicians who cry 
liberty in order to stop men from working. 

Sometimes he becomes a little more philosophical, and says liberty is 
a pure abstraction. Only specific liberties exist; and of these some may 
be granted and others refused, depending on the needs of the moment. 
The liberty which is being demanded by the politicians of the opposition 
amounts to little else than the liberty to substitute themselves for the 
fascisti in power, that is, the liberty of revolution. But revolution is a 
question of power, not of liberty; and fascism will naturally defend its 
liberty ’’ to govern as long as it can, 

The high-brow fascisti on the other hand, have their own doctrine of 
liberty. Mussolini too ascends to this plane once in a while with his 
famous : Liberty is not a right, but a duty.” It is not something to be 
enjoyed but something to be fought for.^^ Gentile with his Hegelian 
training is the undisputed champion at expounding this doctrine. A 
state which presupposes liberty denies it precisely because it presup- 
poses it; for there is no liberty outside the life of the spirit which, unlike 
natural beings, does not presuppose itself, but creates, conquers and 
evolves itself. A man becomes free; he is not so by nature. And the 
state is liberal, in fact and not merely verbally, if it promotes the devel- 
opment of liberty considered as an ideal to be attained and not as a 
natural right to be guaranteed.” Only through the state the individ- 
uaFs state (for individual and state exist in each other, not separately), 
can the individual achieve moral, spiritual liberty, for it is in the state 
that an individuaFs moral being becomes objectified. Liberty must be 
sought in law. Liberty,” says Gentile, is, to be sure, the supreme end 
and aim of every human life; but in so far as personal and social educa- 
tion realize it by evoking this common will in the individual, it presents 
itself as law and hence as the State. And this is not superimposed on 
individual activity and initiative externally, subjecting them to restric- 
tive compulsion, but is their own very essence. . . . The maximum of 
liberty always coincides with the maximum strength of the state.” 

Not any and every state is liberating, of course. The stato etico^ the 
liberating state, is one which is In movement, active, creative, giving 
objective form to the energies of its members. The state whose institu- 
tions are rigid, and in which no issues are being raised, no conflicts 

V. Mussolini; La Nuova Politica, I, pp. 23, 222 j III, p. 31. Also Appendix 
No. 27. 

Gentile: C^e cosa e il fascismOy pp. 11 9-1 20. Also Appendix No. 29. 

Gentile: C/^e cosa e il fascismo, p. 50. 



io8 IDEALIST THEORY 

overcome, is deadening to the life of the spirit, is merely external to 
the individnaFs moral being. Hence conflict, revolution, opposing 
forces are the very means by which liberty is won, and it is only by 
identifying himself in all due obedience with one of these objective social 
moving forces that an individual may win his freedom. The practical 
moral now becomes obvious. The old so-called liberal state, with its 
eternal democratic principles and its stagnant parliament was the real 
enemy of freedom: it was lost in 'Hifeless abstraction and inert mat- 
ter, a foe to the spirit. The new fascist state that is now in process of 
creating itself is by that very token the home of the spirit and the 
salvezza della nostra libertd,^^ 

The same sort of analysis applies to justice. Not all law is just, nor 
all illegality unjust. The fascisti do not hesitate to appeal to justice 
even against the law itself. They speak of their '' just violence ” and 
^^just reprisals,” because such action is more in accordance with their 
ideas of right than the action, or inaction, of the law. When a people 
becomes disgusted with its laws, it is sheer academic quibbling to ask 
whether It has a right to revolt. Devotion to justice does not consist 
in mere devotion to legality. . . . The respect for law represents but 
one aspect and not the highest of our human mission; for over and 
above the legality of today we are required to prepare that of to- 
morrow. . . . And If ever the struggle for justice requires us in any 
case to pass beyond the established order, this must never occur . . . 
out of mere individual interest or judgment, but (for such is the nature 
of justice) only in obedience to another law, higher and more severe; 
which we recognize as already operative and whose more serious and 
onerous duties we accept and undertake. Who says ^ justice ’ says a 
subordination to a hierarchy of values.” 

Though idealists and nationalists come to much the same conclusions, 
they are historically quite distinct theories, especially in Italy. The 
nationalists have no use for the "German philosophy” and Hegelian 
dialectic in which the idealists are steeped. The idealists regard the 
nationalists’ uncritical worship of tradition and nationality as devoid 
of an adequate philosophical basis; or, as they put it, the nationalists 
have a purely "mechanical and abstract” notion of tradition, nation 
and state, and fail to select from the mass of custom and convention 
those traditions which have an inner coherence in aaion and a spiritual 
significance in history Recently Antonio Pagano and other minor 

Gior^o del Vecchio: La Giustizioy in Revista IntemaziondLa M Filosofia del 
191^, III, pp. 447-S. 

cf. Ercole Reggio: Fasctsmo e tradi^one^ in Educmione Fascistay February 
19^7^ PP' 85*^2. Also a good ■ statement of the idealistic theory of the nation is; 



MACHIAVELLIAN THEORY 


109 

writers have attempted a synthesis of the two doctrines, to accompany 
the practical political fusion of nationalists and idealists in fascism.^® 

The third element above mentioned which has entered into the theory 
of the fascist state is the concept of the stato forte, the strong state. This 
idea has its roots back in the Roman Empire, but was revived for 
modern Italy by Dante and Machiavelli, much as for English speaking 
people it was revived by Hobbes. The idea is that the fundamental cri- 
terion of a good state lies in its strength. The virtu of a state is to be 
able to dominate fortuna,^'^ By this is meant not so much its physical 
power or might, as its practical ability to control or govern the various 
forces which play upon it. And when the fascisti say We have the right 
to govern Italy because we alone have the strength (forza),^^ they do 
not mean merely “might makes right”; they mean that in the con- 
flict of forces which characterized the years 1919 to 1922, they, and not 
the democratic government, proved capable of exercising effective con- 
trol and reestablishing some sort of order and authority. And they are 
well aware that this ability to govern is not merely a matter of 
“ force,” but of the interplay of a variety of factors which go to make 
up the “strength” of a movement. The fascisti actually underwent 
this experience before they theorized about it. It came as an empirical 
discovery. 

Even Mussolini, who claims to be a disciple of Machiavelli and who 
perhaps has studied him a little more than the average Italian politician, 
seems to have regarded this as one of the ideas which he got from his 
own experience rather than from his master. In his essay on “Force 
and Consent,” in which he first formulated the doctrine as a doctrine, 
he at least gives an original form to the Machiavellian tradition. All 
government, he maintained, is a combination of force and consent. The 
two are strictly correlative; “force involves consent, and consent is the 
very essence of force per seP In the long run the consent which a 
government enjoys is best measured pragmatically by its force, rather 
than by election schemes and other devices of so-called public opinion. 


Francesco Ercole: 11 carattere morale del nazioncdismo, in Tolitha, February 1922, 
pp. 193-218. 

V. Antonio Pagano: IdeaUsmo e NamonaUsmo, in PoUtlca, August 1926, 
pp. 201—2215 December 1926, pp. 201— 221. 

^ On Machiavelli in this connection see Francesco Ercole: The Politics of 
MacMaveUi; Gentile: Che cosa e il fascismo, pp. 256 ff.j Croce: On the Conduct 
of Life, fasshn, 

V. Corradini: Fascismo Vita dTtcdta, p. 21. Also Appendix No. 28, 

In Gerarchm, April 1922. See also Appendix No. 27. 

Mussolini: La Nuo*oa Politica, I, p. 224. 



Iio MACHIAVELLIAN THEORY 

A government, for example, that relies solely on bayonets and fear is 
highly unstable and loses its control at the first crisis that comes along. 
So long as a government can maintain itself without resorting to excep- 
tional and arbitrary violence, liberty is at a maximum, for consent 
signifies contentment. Hence (and this is where the emphasis falls) 
liberty is possible only in a strong state. Political liberalism may be Ae 
worst enemy of liberty. The most common theme, I suppose, on which 
the fascisti harp is that when the liberal democratic state became wecik, 
liberty in every real sense of the word was lost in the various tyrannies 
which anarchy bred. This fact, still fresh in the Italian mind, is, they 
say, what theoretical considerations ought to lead us to expect. "When 
a nation “loses its head,” quite literally it loses its self-control and 
hence its freedom. To the fnscistif who believe in the most literal in- 
terpretation of the organic theory of the state, it seems axiomatic that 
a nation must have a head and a highly centralized organ of control. 
Self-government ought to be thought of, they say, in terms of “ self- 
control if a nation wants to exercise self-control it must be built like 
the human organism, and must have a central “ will ” which controls 
particular organs and their impulses.®^ 

This theory is a reaction against pluralistic conceptions of authority. 
The State ought to be sovereign and the government authoritative. The 
democratic attempt to govern by checks and balances, to play one 
authority against another, merely breeds confusion. It is an attempt to 
govern the government. Ultimately there must be a supreme power. 
To erect the Law or the Constitution or some other abstract entity into 
such a power is a mere evasion, for that merely transfers the gov- 
ernment to the courts. Law, pragmatically speaking, is lawyers, judges 
and legislators. The practical problem is simple, u/ko shall have the final 
word in the exercise of the law? Whoever this happens to be is the real 
governor. Ultimately it is a question of the classe dirigente, of certain 
persons, who have power. 

The liberals and democrats object to this on the ground that it under- 
mines the whole conception of law. Guglielmo Ferrero, for example, 
complains that the government is not “ legitimate,” that “ law ” must 
be restored as a prime prerequisite, and that delegated authority is the 
only possible basis of government today.®® In a similar vein Bonomi, 
criticising the electoral reform, says: “It reduces the state to the level 
of our municipalities which are captured in turn by factions that desire 
nothing better than to undo the work of their predecessors. The munici- 

V. For example, Roberto Pavese: Liberia e Autoritay in No^a, September 
1926, p. 1 2—1 5* 

V. Ferrero : La Democrazia in Italia, 



MACHIAVELLIAN THEORY 


III 


palitles however have a sphere limited by law, and their partisan ex- 
cesses can be checked by the State. But the State itself, if it be captured 
by a party, is entirely beyond control.^’ To such criticism the fascist 
reply is that of course the state must be “ beyond control,^^ for the state 
exists to control and not to be controlled. If the state is not sovereign, 
it is not a genuine state. And to speak of a disembodied law or of a 
principle of legitimacy as controlling forces over and above the state is 
but a form of idolatry. If, on the other hand, by the term law is meant 
the sovereignty of parliament, then parliament is beyond control.” 
Or, if it be insisted that parliament is subject to the sovereign people, 
then the reply is that there is no government at all. For if the citizens 
severally expect to govern their government, they ought to say frankly 
that they do not care to be governed. Self-government is a contradiction^ 
in terms, unless it means that the people as a collective whole consents 
to be governed by a few of its members, and confers authority upon 
them. But in this sense, the fascist government claims to be a govern- 
ment of the people so long as it enjoys the necessary strength to govern, 
a strength which only popular consent can give, whether this consent 
be expressed by elections or in other forms. In short, a government is 
limited by its power and not by some other authority. Or, if the term 
law is to be used, the law must be the law of the government, not some- 
thing over and beyond it. For law is itself a variable and is dependent 
on its ability to retain the moral support and express the political senti- 
ments of those whom it governs. 

The immediate aim of any government must therefore be to make 
itself strong, authoritative. The means will naturally vary. Neither 
Machiavelli’s advice to princes, nor any other principles of government, 
can be followed slavishly. New situations demand new devices, and a 
government that regards its institutions as ends in themselves and is 
therefore unwilling to adapt Itself to ‘^the whims of Dame Fortune,” as 
Machiavelli said, loses its capacity and hence also its right to govern. 

This pragmatic Machiavellian doctrine which has exercised an enor- 
mous influence on all political thought in Italy, naturally served the in- 
tellectual needs of fascism admirably. For it was evident to the fascisti, 
as it must be to the reader who has followed our story, that fascism 
was carried along on its career by the force of events and not by any 
inner aims. The essence of the movement lay not in its programs, which 
were subject to change wiriiout notice, nor in its ideas, which shiftily 
followed its shifting fortunes, but in its growing power. And by its 
power, I mean not merely its display of violence and physical force, but 
its ability to exercise control in a series of practical exigencies. It became 
Bonomi: From Sodidlsm to Fascism, p. 94. 



II2 


THE UP-TO-DATE STATE 


a sort of “universal emergency service for the nation, and the fascisti 
were no more aware than anyone else of where their services ” might 
be needed nest. They naturally pounced on everything that happened 
to be weak. And their appetite for power grew with their capacity to 
use it. Their power was a surprise even to themselves, and the direc- 
tions it took were quite unforeseen. 

Once their career was made, however, the logical necessity of the 
events became clear to them. When they finally found themselves fight- 
ing Parliament, democracy, liberty and all the institutions of the liberal 
state, they realized that they had been assigned this historic mission 
from the first! The era of the French Revolution was over and a 
new Roman era was dawning. Democracy, liberty and all the sacred 
principles of the French Revolution were useful expedients at the time 
they were invented, but society has changed radically within the last 
century, and nothing ought to seem more natural than that a revolu- 
tionary society should need revolutions in government. 

Democracy and liberalism were not invented as constructive political 
reforms, but were used by the new commercial and industrial bour- 
geoisie to destroy the ancien regime in order to give these classes the 
opportunity to build up a new order of their own, growing out of their 
industrial revolution- This new order was not the democratic state as 
is commonly supposed; their new order was economic and not political. 
It was built up by capital at first, but later labor too built up an order 
on its side. Science, art, education and religion also were freed to build 
up their independent contributions to modern society. In all this the 
democratic state played a decidedly negative role, and the real govern- 
ing forces were non-political. Mussolini, for instance, points out that 

The parliamentary system has been seriously, not mortally, wounded 
by two typical phenomena of our time: on the one hand by syndicalism, 
on the other by journalism; syndicalism, which gathers into definite 
associations all those who have special and particular interests to safe- 
guard and who want to remove them from the incompetence shown by 
political assemblies; and journalism, which is the daily parliament, the 
daily platform where men from the universities, from the sciences, from 
the industries, and from daily life thresh out problems with a competence 
seldom found on the benches of Parliament,^^ 

At last, so the fascisti believe, the turning point has come. These 
new and relatively independent orders of modern society are in need 
of coordination and when coordinated they are able to constitute a new 
constructive political order. The new state Is not so much an attempt 
once more to subject all these forces to an external political control, as 
Mossolinrs speech to the Senate, July 8, 1923. 



THE RUSH FOR THE BAND--WAGON 


113 

it is a political recognition of the fact that new controls have been 
created. The idea is that if capital, labor, education, church, art, etc,, 
are all incorporated into a cultural whole so that they cooperate, this 
organic unity of the actual new social forces will itself constitute a new 
political order, a stato etico, Kulturstaat, stato forte, stato fascista — - 
call it what you please. The point is that some sort of institutional 
synthesis is now possible. And it has come first in Italy, they say, be- 
cause here it is not only possible, but imperative. Italy was forced by its 
economic and political situation after the war to cut out all internal 
friction and coordinate all its resources. Though this revolution will 
no doubt take other forms in other countries, the fascist! regard their 
state as but the beginning of a transformation of European politics; 
for they regard it as the inevitable consequence of the revolutionary 
social changes of the nineteenth century. ‘^All over the world,” said 
Mussolini, there is a feeling that the parliamentary system, a system 
which lasted for a number of decades in the history of the nineteenth 
century, has exhausted its usefulness and that today it is insufficient to 
deal with the growing impetus of the needs and passions of modern 
civilization. There is a feeling everywhere that in this modern society 
it is necessary to reestablish the principles of order, of discipline; of 
hierarchy, in all their severity, without which human society is headed 
for chaos and ruin.” Modern society, as the fascisti are in the habit 
of saying, demands a modern up-to-date state. When modern society 
passes, as it no doubt will, the fascist state will pass also; but in the mean- 
time it will have done its work, it will have really governed. 

IF. The Fascisti in Their State 

But who wants to be governed! Last of all the fascisti. These 
knight errants of the new order with difficulty found their places in 
it. Being aristocrats by profession they naturally gravitated upwards, 
and, since in a hierarchy there is little room at the top, a high pressure 
was generated, which threatened to make a volcano out of the social 
pyramid. 

Immediately after its founding in 1921, the Party had begun filling 
up with a miscellaneous lot of politicians, labor organizers, office seekers, 
— affaristi, as they are called in Italian. For by that time it was clear 
in which direction the political wind was blowing. The socialists and 
communists knew they were beaten. Their labor organizations were 
smashed and their political strength was declining. Their lesser officials 
Mussolini: Discorsi iel p. ^33. Speech in the Chamber of Deputies, 

November 18, 1925. 



II4 THE OLD GUARD 

and petty politicians were therefore compelled to look elsewhere fo 
careers. By the hundreds such men now knocked at the doors of thi 
Fascist Party, and the Duce gave orders to welcome them. He did S( 
not merely because at that time it was important for the party to shov 
voting strength, but also because he took a personal satisfaction in seeing 
ex-communists and socialists confess their sins and acknowledge th< 
truth. He wanted the masses, the popolo d’ltalia, to turn to him as thei- 
leader, and he hoped that by welcoming these proletarian elements intc 
his ranks, fascism might definitely down its bourgeois reputation. Th( 
union early In 1922 of fascism and Rossoni’s confederation of patriotI< 
syndicates also encouraged this trend, for these syndicates were man} 
of them bodily taken over from the socialist organizations. 

Later in 1922 more reputable politicians began drifting into the 
Fascist Party and after the March on Rome, naturally, there was £ 
veritable flood of office seekers coming from all parties. To say noth- 
ing of those office holders under the old regime, who in order to re- 
tain their jobs were suddenly convinced of the truth of fascism. Or 
top of these accretions to the movement came the political trend withir 
the fascist organization itself, which pushed fascist politicians increas- 
ingly to the front and fascist fighters increasingly into the background 
Membership cards were sold wholesale and having a tessera became 
a common byword, like “I have a pass” In short, within a few 
months the membership and character of fascism was radically altered 

At first there was loud rejoicing in the camp over this sudden pros- 
perity, but bitter complaints soon made themselves heard. We noted 
in the preceding chapter that there was strong opposition on the part 
of the squadrists to the founding of any political party whatsoever. 
When their worst fears were realized, large numbers protested and not 
inconsiderable numbers bolted. During the spring of 1922 autono- 
mous fasci^^ sprang up at Florence, Ferrara and other places. Though 
most of these were due to personal rivalries (as for example, the case 
of Pasella at Florence, who was ousted from the Party bureaucracy by 
his subordinate ” Rossi) nevertheless such conflicts reflected a growing 
discontent with the Party machine. When the word of the March 
on Rome began to be passed around, most of these local dissidences 
were patched up and everybody cooperated in the attack, believing 
that once fascism came into power, there would be plenty of fat jobs 
for all. 

Hardly had Mussolini’s coalition cabinet been announced and the 
black shirts been demobilized, when fascist dissent reappeared. In 
Florence the veteran squadrists organized a “ Band of Expulsion ” which 
without waiting for further orders began expelling political parvenues 



MUSSOLINISM 


115 

and of&ce seekers from the local fascio. At Genoa an “ Old Guard ” 
was formed for the same purpose, and in the Marches a jascio di 
combattimento ironically revived the original name which Musso- 
lini had given his organization. At Milan the order of II IQIQ was 
founded, and a magazine by that name to spread the Old Guard 
propaganda. 

The general tactics of this movement were to swear unflinching loyalty 
to Mussolini and to the cause, but to attack the party politicians. There 
was much talk about the Mussolinian doctrine of “ fascist aristocracy 
and it was carefully pointed out that not only the old bureaucracy, which 
Mussolini was naturally unable to clean out all at once, but also the 
official class in the Fascist Party itself needed much “purification.’^ 
The genuine aristocrats, they claimed, those who had borne the brunt 
of the fight, and who alone were capable of renewing the energies of 
the government, had not stooped to party politics and vulgar office 
seeking; but were waiting in silent discipline for the call of the Duce! 
Etc., etc. 

This Mussolinism, as it came to be called, put the Duce in a bad 
predicament. On the one hand it was to his personal interest as well as 
to that of the government to free himself as much as possible from 
dependence on his colleagues in the Party and to encourage anything 
that would give him a reputation as head of a government and not 
leader of a revolutionary party. On the other hand, he could not 
afford to defy his own party, for having but a very shaky foothold in 
Parliament and still less in the bureaucracy and in the army, he would 
be left high and dry if he should lose the leadership of the Party. 
Consequently Mussolini’s stand was equivocal. He tried to play 
both sides. He denounced Mussolinism openly, but encouraged Mus- 
solini-worship by his tactics and personal bearing. He repelled all ex- 
ternal attacks on the Party, but he scattered the quadrumvirate as 
much as possible (De Vecchi, for example, was sent as governor to 
Somaliland!) and decentralized the Party administration. On the other 
hand he resisted the demand for jobs as much as possible, he announced 
he would accept no “ October jascisti/^ and in June 1923 he requested 
that out of 250,000 fascisti who were members of the Party, but not of 
the militia, 150,000 be dropped.^® On the other hand, he denounced all 
attempts to “judge fascisti by their dates ” and called The 1919 Move- 
ment simply ridiculous.®’^ He was very severe on anything that smacked 
of internal friction and indiscipline; any open acts of insubordination or 
“ autonomy he suppressed wherever possible, 

v. Mussolini: La Nuova Politico^ I, p. 159. 

V. Mussolini: La Nuova PoliUca^ P* ^ 9 ^- 



THE DARK INTERIOR 


ii6 

The truth of the matter was that Mussolini did not care to be bothered 
with these matters. As a statesman he felt superior to them. Both by 
temperament and by his nationalist principles he was preoccupied with 
Italy’s international relations and the urgent problems of diplomacy. 
His notion of the administration of the interior was that it was primarily 
a negative affair, a police job, which he might safely entrust to Bianchi, 
while he devoted himself to foreign politics. In his first speech to the 
Senate he said: “ I shall take care of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; at 
bottom the Ministry of the Interior is a ministry of police power. I am 
glad to be at the head of the police force, am certainly not ashamed of 
it and hope that all Italian citizens will forget certain fruitless atavisms 
and will recognize the police as one of the forces most necessary for 
social life. But above all, I intend to conduct foreign policy.” In- 
ternal disturbances Irritated him and he attended to them hastily, im- 
pulsively, often violently. For he hated to descend to such petty affairs. 
After one of his many house cleanings, he told his party leaders brusquely 
that he did not propose to be disturbed by party incidents while he was 
busy with high diplomacy. 

As a result of this attitude on Mussolini’s part, the internal govern- 
ment of the country was practically turned over to the Party politicians, 
for although a rigid distinction was made in theory between the activi- 
ties of the Party and those of the government, in practice no such dis- 
tinction prevailed. Bianchi was both Under-Secretary of the Interior 
and Secretary General of the Party. He simply transformed the local 
party politicians into “ political commissaries ” and gave them extensive 
authority. Within a few months, however, these commissaries made 
themselves so obnoxious to the prefects, chiefs of police, mayors and 
other administrative officers, that Mussolini was forced to intervene and 
to abolish them. In their stead provincial fiduciari ” were created, or, 
more accurately, the old provincial fascisti ras were left intact. Though 
this relieved the towns and cities of much disorder, it put the burden of 
responsibility for the conduct of the Party on the provincial heads, who 
became little Mussolini’s.” Hence the administration varied greatly 
from province to province. Protests against these provincial bosses 
kept pouring in. Finally, the Grand Council of the Party in the fall of 
1923 decided on a further reform. The provincial secretaries were made 
dependent both on the support of the local fasci who from now on 
nominated them, and on the government, whose approval of the nomi- 
nation was made obligatory. Also an attempt was made to separate 
government and Party. Michele Bianchi devoted himself exclusively 
to the Ministry of the Interior and resigned as head of the Party. In 

Mussolini: La Nuo<va FoUtka^ I, p. 25-6. 



DISSIDENCE 


117 

his place came Francesco Giunta, a veteran politician, but with much 
less personal authority than Bianchi. As a result the various members 
of the Directorate were practically independent, and they employed 
their liberty in the lowest sort of grafting and plotting- Besides Giunta, 
there were in this group Cesare Rossi, director of Mussolini's press and 
propaganda office, and keeper, as the phrase went, of the keys to Musso- 
lini's heart; Giovanni Marinelli, who had charge of the funds of the 
Party and who managed them so well that after his arrest for complicity 
in the Matteotti affair it was found that he had seven million lire to his 
personal credit in various banks; Italo Balbo, who persisted in directing 
squadrist violence; and a number of other men of the same general 
calibre. These men were continually sending out orders to the local 
fascif commanding them '"to render life impossible” in their com- 
munity for anyone they saw fit to persecute; and all this at the same 
time that Mussolini was promising an end of violence and ordering 
prefects to enforce the law. 

Dissent within the fascist ranks now took on more serious proportions. 
There were innumerable personal rivalries as in the case of Sala, the 
fascist mayor of Alessandria, a popular veteran squadrist, who clashed 
with Eduardo Torre, a politician who was appointed high commissioner 
of railroads; or the case of Padovanx at Naples, who continued to fight 
the ultra-reactionary nationalist bands. But out of such conflicts arose 
more general issues. In the south the nationalists flared up when the 
fascisti tried to take over their local organizations. They were willing to 
fuse, but they did not expect to be forced to surrender. As for the lower 
classes, they became Increasingly hostile after the split with the popular- 
ists. The fascisti, not having local leaders, or not using them, tried 
to invade the south with their northern politicians, which only made 
matters worse. 

In the north the first important case to rise to the level of divergence 
on fundamental principles was that of Misuri. In an earlier chapter we 
have already given some account of the rivalry between the Deputy 
Misuri and the squadrist Pighetti. The intricate details of what followed 
are hardly worth mentioning in themselves, but they may be of interest 
as a sample of the way in which the Party was functioning. After the 
Misuri-Pighetti duel in February 1922, the Party sent De Vecchi and 
TeruzzI to investigate the situation in Perugia. Their report, though it 
admitted Misuri's hot-headedness, was on the whole favorable to him, 
and recommended that he be kept at Perugia and that Pighetti be given 
some other sphere of usefulness. The report was kept secret and buried 
in the files. Meanwhile Misuri launched several attacks on Bastianini 
(now in the Ministry of Agriculture), then provincial secretary, who 



ii8 THE CASE OF MISURI 

was implicated in the rivalry. Receiving no vindication of his conduct 
from the Party headquarters, he resigned and joined the nationalist 
group. As he did so he sent a plea for redress to Mussolini, accompany- 
ing it with an attack on the bureaucracy. Shortly after, the nationalists 
fused with the fascisti, so that Misuri was faced with the choice of re- 
turning to the fold or openly following the opposition. He had some 
hopes of being able to make a dignified return when the March on 
Rome was being planned, for De Vecchi wanted to put Misuri, who was 
a biologist, in charge of the sanitary corps of the militia, but other au- 
thorities interfered. In the spring of 1923 a new investigation of the 
whole case was ordered, and one of Bastianini’s friends, Sansanelll, was 
put on the investigating committee. On the recommendation of San- 
sanelli Mussolini agreed to transfer Misuri to the Rome fascio. But in 
the meantime Misuri, through De Vecchi had succeeded in getting hold 
of the first commission’s report. He published this in a leading opposi- 
tion paper, the Mondo. Everybody was scandalized. Pighetti chal- 
lenged De Vecchi and Teruzzi to duels, but was expelled from the Party 
and locked up for a while under arrest. Three fascist politicians, among 
them Bastianini, challenged Misuri, but finally the Bastianini-Misuri 
duel was the only one actually fought. Naturally Misuri, the cause of 
all this trouble, was expelled from the Party. Shortly after, he told 
FInzi and Buttafochi, of the Ministry of the Interior, to tell Mussolini 
that he was planning to make a speech in the Chamber of Deputies for 
the fascist opposition ” to the Party bureaucracy. He was told that 
the Prime Minister ordered him not to speak. Whereupon Misuri 
replied that he was not subject to his orders, being expelled from the 
Party. He was then told that Mussolini said he would arrest him, if he 
spoke. Whereupon Misuri replied that being a Deputy, he was not 
subject to arrest. The following day, May 29, 1923, he made his speech. 
In it he praised Mussolini and his personal work, but he launched a 
scathing attack on his associates in the Party, from Bianchi down.®® 
He urged a clear separation of government and Party, more attention on 
the part of the government to the voice of the Parliament and less to 
the bureaucracy, decentralization of the militia and purification of fas- 
cism from its recent accretions. The evening following the speech, in 
an alley behind the House of Parliament, Misuri was stopped by a fascist 
squad and beaten to unconsciousness. Mussolini ordered the arrest of 
the squadrists. Bonaccofsi, the leader of the squad, was locked up for 
a few hours, and then set free to resume fighting the good fight and re- 
ceived the hearty greetings of the Duce, Not long after, he was seen 
among the prominent militia officers gathered around Mussolini on the 

V. Misuri: La RivoUa MoroLcy pp. 95—122. Also Appendix No. 17. 



PATRIA E LIBERIA 


119 

speaker’s balcony at the Bologna demonstration. Misuri was now cured 
of his confidence in Mussolini and threatened to speak again in the 
Chamber. On hearing this, Mussolini was enraged and in violent lan- 
guage ordered his lieutenants to put a stop to him.^® But instead, the 
Chamber was closed for elections ” before Misuri had another chance 
to speak. 

Prominent among those fascisti who congratulated Misuri after his 
speech was the Under-Secretary for Agriculture, Corgini. He was also 
a conservative liberalistic fascist and had openly opposed the syndicalist 
monopolies which Rossini was trying to establish in agriculture. His 
getting up from the government benches and shaking hands with Misuri 
in a very conspicuous manner, was sufficient pretext to cause his ex- 
pulsion from the Party. 

Together Misuri and Corgini now organized a “ constitutional asso- 
ciation ” called Patria e Liberia, They explained in their platform that 
they were “ opposed to any form of political or syndical monopoly and 
proposed to defend the broadest liberty of thought, association, propa- 
ganda and press, within the limits of the law.” They wanted to prevent 
the fascist movement, “ which was originally a movement of romanti- 
cism, of chivalry, of defense for society and civilization,” from losing this 
spirit “ among the tortuous subtleties of a party career,” or in a “ rigid, 
military, hierarchical ” organization. We want to gather around us,” 
they said, “ for a decided stand, that balanced moderate opinion which 
is forming at the heart of every social class, that is desirous of returning 
to an enduring normality of life.” 

The Patria e Liberia was applauded by many but followed by few. 
The opposition liberals and democrats welcomed it as a first sign of 
returning sobriety among the fascisti, but they naturally did not abandon 
their own old party for this upstart. A number of the dissident fascisti 
adhered to it, but the great majority of them preferred to stay in the 
Party, boring from within.” What practical success it had was local. 
When the elections came in April, Misuri ran in Perugia as an independ- 
ent candidate, and thus merely helped to divide the opposition into small 
groups. He failed of election and the Association practically disap- 
peared from view. Nevertheless it was of considerable significance 
in that it gave initial impetus to a movement which soon overflowed the 
narrow bounds of Misuri^s personal following. 

Misuri tried to get a foothold in Florence, but failed because other 
dissident groups had already established themselves there and in Siena 

^ V. Rossi’s Memorandum, in La Ricostrmmne Fasdsta, p. 178. Also Ap- 
pendix No. 19. 

V. Misuri: Rkfolfa Morale, pp. 273-4. 



120 


THE NATIONAL FASCl 


and other Tuscan towns. From the platform of these groups, who called 
themselves Fasci Nazionali^ I take the following: 

Whereas the wire-pulling and grafting of the politicians, the fiercely 
autocratic system of the oligarchy on top, the continual superimposition 
of party machinery on state offices, the harboring of men in the party 
who are notoriously discredited for their private and political immo- 
rality, have brought fascism to a most serious crisis; and whereas in 
spite of all superficial labels, the conflict and contract between the 
reconstruction and salutary work of the government and the parasitical 
demagoguery of the party is becoming steadily more evident, . . . the 
iasci nazionali . . . reconfirm their faith in Benito Mussolini, the head 
of the fascist government. . . . Though ready to rush to the Duce^s 
side at the least indication of a recurrence of bolshevism, the fasci 
nazionali now desire a return to legality, to normality and to a peaceful 
civil life. They especially condemn unjustified violence, above all when 
it serves to conceal the protection of certain individual or class 
interests. . . . 

Every form of syndicalism that is genuinely national must be quali- 
tative, not quantitative; must organize minds, not herd men like cattle. 
Every kind of monopoly or coercion, the sordid heritage of bolshevist 
systems, is flatly condemned.” 

These National Fasci obviously differed from Misuri’s position in 
that they explicitly wished to remain within the fascist movement, were 
loyal to Mussolini and had no desire to upset the fascist regime. They 
were even unwilling to set up separate candidates for the elections. 
Their stand was therefore little more than a protest and a temporary 
secession from the regular fasci until these had been “ purified.” In the 
meantime, however, Sala and Forni, two fascisti who had got into trouble 
with the party machine, were organizing fasci nazionali In Lombardy 
and the provinces to the north, where they enjoyed a considerable per- 
sonal following. They felt strong enough to appear as candidates at the 
elections and they organized an extensive campaign, bringing the Tuscan 
fasci nazionali under their control, giving the dissident movement a 
practical force. Shortly before the election (on March ii, to be exact), 
the Directorate of the Party sent out orders to various places where 
these men were campaigning, enjoining the local fasci "to render life 
impossible to the dissenting candidates,” and the Provincial Secretary 
of Novara added his bit to the order, saying, " block the way for Sala 
and Forni; they must not be allowed to speak.” The next day these 
two men were attacked in the railroad station of Milan, and beaten 

From Giacomo Lumbroso: La crisi del facismo^ pp. 135-6. 

^ V, Appendix No. 18. 



INTEGRALISM AND REVISIONISM 


I2I 


severely so that Forni barely escaped with his life. In spite of this 
persecution. Form was elected to Parliament. He found himself com- 
pletely Isolated, however, since neither the opposition nor the fascist! 
trusted him. The fasci nazionali were gradually broken up, their offi- 
cers beaten, and the members expelled from the Party. After the crisis 
was over, those who had “ behaved during their expulsion and wanted 
to come back were allowed to reenter, others were to be treated as 
“ traitors.” 

A milder and more hIgh-brow form of dissent was started by a number 
of intellectual heretics. After the March on Rome the Voce publishing 
house in Florence began publishing a series of volumes devoted to the 
intellectual elaboration and approfondimento of fascism. The writers 
connected with the Voce, for the most part affiliated with the Gentile 
school of Idealist philosophy (Suckert, SofficI, Volt), were critically 
minded and fairly independent in their political thinking. Their critical 
studies naturally led to a certain amount of heresy and to philosophical 
subtleties which shocked some of the more naive fascisti. Giuseppe 
Bottai, one of these young idealists, who, by the way, had been a futurist, 
during the crisis of 1923 founded a journal called Critica Fascista, In 
this journal even more than in the Voce books, crucial points were dis- 
cussed critically. The general point of view represented by these 
integralists ” was that fascism could neither be dominated by the op- 
portunist politicians who had no constructive ideas at all, nor by the 
liberals who wanted a return to the constitution, but by a radical 
reconstruction of the state, wholly in the hands of bona fide fascisti. 
They wanted integrated fascist constitutional reform. They stood for 
what Mussolini later formulated as “ All the power to all of fascism.” 
On the whole the fascist liberals gave them little opposition, and in 
practice they soon found their only serious opponents to be the old 
style politicians in the bureaucracy. Hereupon Farinacci and lesser 
loud-mouthed fascisti condemned them for attacking the government 
and violating discipline. The integralists then assailed not only the 
bureaucracy but the provincial ras as well, and Farinacci and his crowd 
in particular. These were held up as unworthy of fascism because of 
their war record and their undue violence, and also because they were 
uneducated, tainted by agnosticism, and affiliated with Fieemasonry. 
The squadrist journals, like Farinacci’s daily Cremona Nuova, Settimelli 
and Carli’s daily Vlmpero, La Fiamma Nera, VAssalto, and a host of 
lesser ones, took up the challenge. They styled themselves the cham- 
pions of fascismo intransigente, and dubbed their opponents revision- 
ists, dissidents, Vodsts, etc. In defense, the Critica Facista crowd, and 
Suckert in his weekly La Conquista dello Stato, insisted that their 



122 


THE CASE OF ROCCA 


brand of fascism was not a new kind but simply fascismo integrale, that 
is, thoroughgoing, pure, unfaltering. And a serious rivalry ensued 
between these two kinds of champions of the purest kind of fascism — a 
rivalry prompted more by personal dislikes and “ cultural differences 
than by rival political doctrines. 

A similar type of criticism was launched against the bureaucracy by 
a group of writers who frankly called themselves revisionists, and whose 
chief aim was to encourage democratic control within the party and 
to oppose tendencies toward dictatorship and rigid party cliques. 
G. Cipriani-Avoglio and other writers in the Polemica Fascista carried on 
this sort of propaganda. 

Another distinct aspect of dissidence centered about the case of 
Massimo Rocca. He was personally in a singular political position. 
Ever since the beginnings of fascism, Rocca had championed the idea of 
economic councils of experts. He had succeeded in organizing several 
of these so-called gruppi di competenza and his general idea for the 
structure of the fascist state seems to have been this: to supplement 
the ministry and bureaucracy by syndicates on the one hand, and on 
the other by his councils of the professional and industrial elite, and to 
give both of these economic organizations legislative functions, so that 
they might introduce technical intelligence Into Parliament. It was to 
be a state modelled on economic rather than on political lines. Being 
personally intimate with Mussolini and having enjoyed his steady sup- 
port, he thought he could push his scheme to a speedy realization. But 
he encountered overwhelming opposition. RossonI and the syndicalists 
opposed him because they were trying to get complete control of the 
whole economic organization for themselves and had no intention of 
dividing power with Rocca and his gruppi di competenza. From the 
political side, he naturally had the whole hierarchy of politicians on his 
back, because of his attack on the party, his interference with their 
machine by his gruppi di competenza, and his opposition to political 
fascism in general. His own gruppi di competenza met with little suc- 
cess, since they had influence neither with the syndical confederations 
nor with the Party. They were forced to be a rather superfluous ad- 
junct to the various national ministries, and a constant source of inter- 
ference and irritation for the provincial administrations. In this situ- 
ation, Mussolini’s only move was, of course, to abandon Rocca. Hence 
when Rocca became involved in the general dissident movement, this 
was quickly seized on by his enemies as an opportunity to get rid of him. 

Beginning with September 1923 Rocca, a dilettante in philosophy as 
well as in politics, published a series of articles in the Critica Fascista 
and in the Nuova Paese,. in which he maintained the apparently innocent 



THE CASE OF ROCCA 123 

thesis that “ the revolution was made by the fascisti, for Italy, but not 
for the fascisti themselves/’ Among other things he wrote: For some 
time I have been asking myself whether the Fascist Party represents the 
necessary support for Benito Mussolini, or whether it is rather a para- 
sitic growth weighing on his shoulders. It now seems to me that this 
second hypothesis, already true to a certain point, is becoming continu- 
ally more real in an Italy which is entirely Mussolinian and little fascist; 
and less fascist every day, and certainly not through the fault either of 
the Duce or of Italy.” This was evidently not so innocent. The 
intransigent journals replied and before long heated polemics ensued. 
They spread rapidly and became more violent, more personal and more 
scandalous. All sorts of charges of corruption were made on both sides 
and the argument descended from the critical and philosophical level 
in which it had begun to the most violent journalism. Rocca himself, 
and the Critic a Fascista too, for that matter, kept in dignified bounds 
and tried to keep the polemics from becoming personal encounters, but 
he was caught in the maelstrom and his predicament was exploited by 
his enemies. The Executive Board of the Party wanted to expel him im- 
mediately for indiscipline, but Mussolini objected. The Executive 
Board then handed in their resignations. The Grand Council of the 
Party meeting shortly after, January 1924, took up the matter and con- 
verted the sentence into four months abstention from political activity, 
that is, until the elections were over. The Executive Board was replaced 
by a National Directorate, headed by Giunta, but containing some 
nationalist members who were favorably disposed toward Rocca. The 
Directorate’s chief concern was to run the election and though their 
campaign was full of violence and persecution, Rocca was not seriously 
molested. Though he behaved with a certain show of loyalty, his dis- 
cipline was by no means exemplary. He made an election speech at 
Turin on “Moral Reconstruction,” which though it displeased the 
opposition more than it did the fascist authorities, nevertheless smacked 
too much of political activity.” On the whole he confined himself to 
writing more serious essays, giving his dissidence a philosophical frame- 
work. These were published by the Voce, but not until after the elec- 
tions. Even before the elections, however, seeing that things were going 
against him, he made a last effort to retrieve his fortunes. He founded 
the Corriere Italiano at Rome, a pretentious daily, and devoted It to a 
moderate Mussolinism. He attacked such dissidents as Misuri because 
they had deserted Mussolini, and he adopted a generally middle posi- 
tion, which he hoped might win Mussolini’s support. He preached the 
doctrine of the new legality, a doctrine which Mussolini had preached 

^ V, Massimo Rdcca; Idse sul Fascisfno, p. 



INTERNAL FRICTION 


124 

all through 1923 in order to retain his parliamentary support. He de- 
nounced violence^ just as Mussolini did, and he argued that fascism 
must bend all its elforts to reconstruct the law, to give Italy a “ new 
normalcy,” all of which sounded not unlike Mussolini. He called his 
conception of the fascist state the new liberalism, hoping that this would 
fit in with Mussolini’s coalition politics. But unfortunately he kept at 
this too long. After the elections the situation had changed and so had 
Mussolini. Rocca and his newspaper now became a personal embarrass- 
ment to Mussolini and a general center of anti-Party polemics. Isolated 
on all sides, he was expelled from the Party and the Corner e Italiano 
was turned over to Filipelli, of whom we shall say more directly. When 
Rocca attempted at Genoa to defend himself he was roundly beaten by 
the local squad. After his expulsion and after the Matteotti affair he 
continued to hope for a swing in his direction, and he talked much about 

my fascism.” But after a thoroughgoing attack on De Stefani's bud- 
get in 1925, it was no longer possible for him to pose as a fascist of any 
sort. A little later, ironically enough, he was caught in the maladminis- 
tration of insurance funds, was forced to flee the country, and was de- 
prived of his citizenship. 

The Directorate, which in January Mussolini had announced as a 
solution for the evils that afflicted the Party, proved but one more 
stumbling-block. Its conduct of the elections, especially the Intrigues of 
Glunta, were violently attacked by those who had been literally beaten 
In the elections and by the dissidents to whom it appeared even worse 
than previous party regimes. The Directorate was asked to resign 
immediately after the elections, and Mussolini picked a quadrumvirate, 
which he hoped might prove more acceptable. It consisted of Forges- 
Davanzati (a nationalist), Marinelli, Rossi and Melchlorri; the last 
named three being veteran party politicians. The quadrumvirate was 
not a popular reform ” with anybody, and it was generally understood 
to be a mere tide-over until the meeting of the Grand Council in June. 
On all sides the impression persisted that the party was a liability on 
the hands of the government, and that fascism In general was turning 
out to be much less of a renovation of Italian politics than the theory of 
the Revolution claimed. 

The various discordant elements which fascism had embraced con- 
tinued to come to the surface and revealed its lack of genuine unity or 
constructive program. For example, Rossi and Farinacci, ex-socialists, 
disapproved radically of De Stefani’s laissez faire finance. The con- 
servative liberals and the fascist industrialists in turn disapproved of 
the growing power of fascist syndicalism. The syndicalists were an- 
noyed at the rich men’s sons, the students and the bourgeois youths who 



THE MUSSOLINI MYTH 


125 

felt their own importance and made themselves conspicuous in the 
party and in the militia. The young aristocrats, on the other hand, 
wanted to expel the fascist labor leaders, who, they said, had merely 
changed their shirts and not their Ideas and standards. The idealistic 
liberals were opposed to the continuance of violence and shocked by the 
grafting. Gentile insisted there was a difference between continued ordi- 
nary violence and the divine violence ” of the revolution,^® which latter 
alone was worthy of true fascists. Filareti, a southern monarchist, said 
he did not mind revolutionary violence, but systematic violence ” was 
detestable.^® There were democratic fascisti who expected their regime 
to invigorate, not to overthrow, democratic institutions. And there were 
old-fashioned monarchists and anti-democrats who had welcomed 
fascism as a new aristocracy, but who were now disillusioned by the 
fascist demagogues The igigers looked down on the newcomers, 
and the newcomers deplored the remnants of squadrism. Many na- 
tionalists were worried over tendencies in the party; Corradini, their 
leader, expressed his worries very frankly. Some of the politicians them- 
selves (for example, Dino Perrone Compagni, leader in Tuscany) sym- 
pathized with the dissenters. The dissenters fought not only the 
intransigents but also each other. In short, all semblance of unity was 
gone, and fascism threatened to perish not from external persecution but 
from internal disintegration. 

Only one thing kept them together — Mussolini. All were loyal to 
him. The more fascisti disagreed among themselves, the more they 
exalted Mussolini. Not a little of Mussolini’s present prestige is due to 
this fact. He became the “ sad, solitary giant.” The Mussolini myth 
was invented to conceal rebellion, much like the myth of “personal 
loyalty to King George” of the American Revolutionists. But once 
established, the myth began to be believed and today practically every- 
body agrees that Mussolini and he alone had held the Party together. 
In a sense it Is true, just as it Is true that God unites his warring children. 
Mussolini Is the symbol for the fact that all kinds of fascisti want to 
join In running the government in spite of their differences. 

The strain on Mussolini was considerable. He could be all things 
to all men, but not all at once. His general policy was to show the ut- 
most loyalty to the Party in his public utterances, but to tinker with 
the Party machine in quiet. He preached the most rigid discipline, 
spurned all personal followers, declared himself the most ardent anti- 
Mussolinian and the most intransigent of the intransigents. But in 

^ See Appendix No. 29. 

cf. Filareti: In Margine del Fasctmo, pp. 207 ff. 

V. Filareti: In Margins del Fascinto, pp. 390 



126 


PENITENCE 


practice lie acted on the advice of his critics by his own firm will/’ In 
this way he continued to hold universal confidence, but how long could 
he keep it up ? 

Such was the Inner condition of the Partito Nazionale Fascista when 
on June ii, 1925, the Matteotti murder broke upon it. As regards the 
Party machine, it caused no great surprise in public opinion, for it was 
but one more instance of the customary policy of “ rendering life im- 
possible ” to the adversaries. But on the side of the government, it 
created an enormous sensation. For it revealed the fact that the con- 
trast which had been established in the public imagination between 
Party and government was largely a myth. It came out that FinzI, of 
the Ministry of the Interior, whom Matteotti had intended to expose as 
a grafter, was one of those principally involved in the murder. Other 
members of the government immediately came under suspicion. Though 
the fascisti^ even the most dissident, did not believe that Mussolini was 
directly involved, the confidence in his administration and consequently 
in him was rudely shaken. Mussolini had said to the Chamber of 
Deputies, some time ago, “ In internal affairs whatever happens, hap- 
pens through my precise and direct volition and on my express order, 
for which I naturally assume full and personal responsibility. Hence it 
is idle to argue about the individual members of particular ministries; 
the orders are mine.” Now all sorts of underhand dealings came to 
light. Something was wrong somewhere. The opposition held Mus- 
solini personally responsible; the fascisti maintained he had devoted 
himself too much to foreign affairs. In either case, the prestige of the 
government was gone, and it became clear that government and Party 
were cooperating in this nefarious work. 

Mussolini put on sackcloth and ashes. He admitted that he had paid 
too little attention to internal politics; he decried the few fascist repro- 
bates who were undermining his work and promised vigorous prosecu- 
tion and complete justice. He would spare no one! Accordingly he 
sacrificed almost everybody whose name was mentioned in the scandal 
or who for any reason was unpopular. He jailed not only Dumini and 
the actual murderers, but also Cesare Rossi and Marinelli (two of the 
Quadrumvirate), and Filipelll (editor of the Coriiere Italiano), who 
with Finzi had carelessly tried to drag Mussolini himself into the affair. 
Among those who were forced to resign were Bianchi, Finzi, Giunta, 
General De Bono, — in short, practically all the Party leaders. Musso- 
lini forced the Chamber of Deputies to accept Giunta’s resignation as 
Deputy. The quadrumvirate was supplanted by a provisional direc- 
torate” of eleven members, among them strong provincial leaders, 

February lo, 1923. v. La Nuova Politica, I, p. 61. 



INTRANSIGENCE 127 

nationalists and syndicalists. The August session of the Grand Council 
established a Directorate of fifteen, among them several Deputies, of 
which the following five were selected as an executive committee: Fari- 
nacci, Felicioni, Forges-Davanzati, Maraviglia and Melchiorri. 

Meanwhile Mussolini had completely reorganized his cabinet. He 
himself withdrew from the Ministry of the Interior, to which he called 
Federzoni, who enjoyed the confidence both of the nationalists and the 
liberals. In his place as Minister of Colonies he put the rich agricultur- 
alist, Duca Pietro Lanza dl Scalea. Alfredo Rocco, another nationalist, 
was made Minister of Justice. Carnazza, Minister of Public Works, 
who was mixed up in the financing of the Corriere Italiano, was sup- 
planted by a liberal, Sarrochi. Gentile, who had made himself un- 
strenuous school reforms, was succeeded by another 
liberal, Casati, and he in turn shortly after by Fedele. Acerbo, the hero 
of the electoral reform, was removed as a sop to the opposition. The 
only important member whom he retained was De Stefani, who had 
gained the reputation of having kept the party grafters out of the 
public treasury. 

In addition Mussolini profusely promised law and order, outdoing 
the dissidents. He appointed a commission for constitutional reform, re- 
formed the militia, flattered Parliament, in fact made every concession 
possible without weakening the regime. As a result the moderate dissi- 
dents or integrallsts got the impression that Mussolini had really 
cleaned house thoroughly In the government, and that they had 
won their point so far as Mussolini and the government were concerned. 

They were confirmed in this when they discovered that Mussolini was 
getting opposition from the Intransigents. Their leader, Farinacci, who 
all along had been opposed to a party hierarchy and who wanted fas- 
cism to be primarily provincial, governed by the ras, but who had now 
risen to a prominent place in party politics, openly and frankly disap- 
proved of Mussolini’s policy of conciliation. He was glad, he said, that 
he had never joined the ghostly dance that had been staged around a 
corpse.” We have merely lost two years by these tactics,” he said, 
and he recommended the most drastic and violent measures against all 
opposition from without and all indiscipline within the ranks. Some 
of the extremists lamented the fact that they had ever let themselves 
in on “ electionism,” blaming the election for all the evils which had 
overtaken the party and regretting that they had not cleaned out Par- 
liament completely at the very start. This open divergence between 
Mussolini and the intransigents emboldened the integralists once more 
to support Mussolini against the Party, especially against the extremist 


V. Appendix Na. 20. 



128 THE NEW INTRANSIGENCE 

faction, and to clamor for further reform and a restriction of the Party s 
activities. 

By December it became evident that Mussolini s policy, though it 
had enabled him to retrieve his personal reputation a little, had not 
only failed to bring back the Aventine Secession into the Chamber,, 
but had also stimulated indiscipline ” among the fascisti. In January, 
therefore, as we said above, Mussolini yielded and came out frankly 
for a policy of forceful repression. The office of Secretary General of 
the Party was revived, and Farinacci was appointed to it. He went up 
and down the country preaching his doctrine of discipline and intransi- 
gency, weeding out all who did not fall into line with him and super~ 
intending the persecution of the opposition parties and press. It was 
now the intransigents’ turn to proclaim the victory. But they overdid 
it. Farinacci talked too much about himself and not enough about 
Mussolini. He made It appear that he and his type of fascism had at 
last proved their supremacy and had even won over the Duce. He 
countermanded Federzoni’s orders repeatedly and in general took the 
attitude that the Party could now run the government. His activity, 
though it produced the semblance of discipline and unity within the 
ranks, naturally aroused the most bitter resentment among the opposi- 
tion. His violent deeds and still more violent language were good 
ammunition for their guns, and he, rather than Mussolini, became the 
central object of their scorn and hatred. The culmination came in 
March 1926 with the trial for the Matteotti murder, at which Farinacci 
defended the murderers and succeeded in getting such a light sentence 
for them that it amounted practically to a verdict of not guilty. The 
trial had been carefully staged in the isolated provincial town of Chietl 
in the Abruzzi mountains, and all sorts of precautionary measures had 
been taken, but even at that there was a storm of indignation, and of 
course it gathered on the head of Farinacci, much to Mussolini’s relief. 
Federzoni now induced Mussolini to ask Farinacci to resign, which he 
did. It was all done very gracefully. Farinacci was lauded for his 
noble work and he, in turn, expressed his conviction that his task had 
been completed and that fascism was now safe and sound. 

Nevertheless the significance of the resignation was clear. In the 
northeast some of Farinacd’s fanatic followers threatened Insurrection, 
but he urged them to discipline ” and retired quietly. In his place 
Mussolini appointed Augusto Turati, the assistant secretary of the 
Party, and formerly secretary of the Brescia fas do. He is a neutral 
figure, perfectly harmless and very useful in the hands of Mussolini. 
He uses the same words discipline and intransigency ” that Farinacci 
used, but he is careful to give them a new meaning. For example: 



NEW CONSTITUTION OF THE PARTY 


129 

If by intransigency is meant the desire to maintain intact the funda- 
mental lines of the fascist idea, to maintain in our actions the original 
conception of fascism in its highest, clearest and firmest expression, with- 
out intermixture of one’s own mind, in thinking of fascism as the will to 
work, and the passion to construct, I am agreed; but if by intransigency 
is meant sitting down and doing nothing and only congratulating oneself 
on being an intransigent fascist or one of the first hour, then I call that 
Buddhism and Mahommedanism but not fascism. . . . 

“ Today more than ever we feel ourselves to be squadrists, not out of 
a useless and stupid hankering for breaking heads or burning desks, 
but out of a holy pride in defending the purity and beauty of our faith. 
And we have never felt more completely than we do today our high 
mission, the mission that called us yesterday into the public squares 
when they were filled with crowds whom demagogues had intoxicated 
with their folly; the mission that drove us, desperate minorities, against 
an unfit and timid government; the mission that made us intransigent 
champions of the necessity of overthrowing the false idols of an oppor- 
tunist and corrupt democracy, of an abstract, Pontius Pilate sort of 
liberalism, of the popularists who falsely pretended religion. Against 
all this, in the realms of faith, of culture, of production, of finance, of 
labor, we squadrists are upholding that lively sense of Italian power, 
those weighty and systematic works of national reconstruction, willed 
and realized by the government of Benito Mussolini. We feel that the 
squadrist spirit Is more alive than ever, with its fresh new vision of 
power and of ideal, not material, violence, and with the activities of a 
government which has succeeded in transforming into a real order and 
into objective measures the aspirations of our souls and the torments 
of our Impatience. . . . But for all this, two great forces are necessary; 
intellectual discipline and substantial intransigency.” 

It is not difficult to read between these lines. Turati’s job is to lead 
fascist energies into constructive forms. He is preaching the ideal 
violence ” of political reconstruction. He is preaching intellectual 
intransigency,” or as he frequently puts It ^^intransigency towards 
oneself ” as opposed to the “ formal intransigency ” which had come 
to mean little more than intellectual irresponsibility. But above all he 
is centering all eyes on Mussolini. Unlike Farinacci’s his speeches 
always close with a peroration for the Dues, He seldom speaks long; 
he says it is time “ to put an end to orators ”; he urges fewer ceremonies, 
less ritual, more hard work. 

His own hard work was to carry out the orders of Mussolini and 
Federzoni in the matter of imposing a stricter discipline on the pro- 

Augusto Turati: Ragioni J dealt di Vita Fatetsta, pp. 136-8 and 64. 



NEW CONSTITUTION OF THE PARTY 


130 

vincial secretaries, who were still a continual source of friction. In 
October 1926 the Grand Council finally instituted a thoroughgoing re« 
form and passed a new constitution for the Party The general pur- 
pose of the reform was (l) to carry out the idea of hierarchy within 
the Party and to abolish practically all “ electlonism (2) to define 
the functions of the Party and subject it to government control. The 
annual congress at which the officials had heretofore been elected (at 
least nominally) was abolished. The local fasci could not elect their own 
secretaries. The only concession to democracy was that the Grand 
Council, not the Duce, elects the Secretary of the Party, the Assistant 
Secretaries and the Directorate. Otherwise authority invariably comes 
from on top. As the constitution puts it: The ordinances and hier- 
archies without which there can be no discipline of energies nor educa- 
tion of the people, must be illuminated and guided from on top where 
there is a comprehensive view of powers, duties, functions and merits.’^ 

The Grand Council, the source of Party authority, is presided over 
by the Duce and contains a liberal admixture of members of the govern- 
ment and senators and other fascisti who are not immediately in the 
party bureaucracy. The Directorate, which is appointed by the Council, 
consists of the Secretary of the Party and eight others, and meets once 
a month under the presidency of the Duce. It is the administrative 
body of the Party. The Secretary appoints the provincial secretaries, 
who constitute the National Council, This National Council, which 
contains the men who actually carry on the work of the Party in the 
various provinces and which corresponds roughly to the group that 
In former years ruled the Party, has very limited powers. The Secretary 
calls it together to “ examine the activities of the life of the Party and 
to receive general executive orders.’^ Each Federal Secretary appoints 
the secretaries of the local fasci in his province, and the local secretary 
selects five members as his assistants, constituting the Directorate of the 
Fas do. Provincial councils and directorates are constructed on the 
same plan. Only those who have been fascists for at least three years 
are eligible for provincial offices. Party officials are prohibited from 
holding any other salaried political office. 

The duties of the Federal (Provincial) Secretary are defined in detail 
and are in general non-political, quite distinct from those of the prefect. 
Friction between prefects and fascist officials had been one of the worst 
disorders in the regime, and though Mussolini had early and repeat- 
edly announced his unquestioned support of the prefects, this policy was 
not enforced in practice. Formerly when the prefects and mayors were 

V. Appendix No. 21. 

V. Mussolini: La Nucyoa PoUtica^ I, p. 151, 



DOUBTS 


left-overs from the old regime there might have been some excuse for 
their interference, but now that the prefects and podesta were picked by 
Mussolini and directly responsible to him, he said he would tolerate no 
rasism. Nevertheless friction continued and Mussolini has had to 
defend his prefects on a number of occasions, notably in January 1927 
by his famous circular to prefects,” in which he promised to support 
the prefects to the limit even against the provincial party secretaries 
and fascist squadrists. In his speech to the Chamber, May 26, 1927, he 
reported that the great majority of provinces had been straightened out 
and that he did not intend to “ hand any prefect’s scalp to a provincial 
secretary.” 

Shortly after the New Constitution was passed, the Grand Council 
(January) decided to close the doors of the Party absolutely except to 
the boys as they graduated ” from the Advance Guard, the Junior fas- 
cist organization. March 23, the anniversary of the founding of the 
fasci^ was established as a sort of commencement day for the new 
recruits, when they are initiated and given their membership cards and 
guns. They not only take the oath of loyalty to the King, but they 

solemnly swear to follow without question the orders of the Duce and 
to serve the cause of the fascist revolution with all their might and if 
necessary with their blood.” The Party will henceforth be the training 
school for the classe dirigente of the future. 

It now seems quite clear that the Party is of dwindling political im- 
portance. The Grand Council still duplicates some of the activities of 
the Council of Ministers of the Government, but it does not interfere. 
It is an expensive luxury, but no longer a nuisance. There are those 
who would like to call it an association,” not a party, since “ party ” 
implies more than one. But even though it continues to be called a 
party, it is clear that its functions are to be cultural ” rather than 
political. It can not be abolished, they say, so long as there is still 
need of Infusing a national consciousness, educating the youth in the 
principles of duty and sacrifice, and in general “ fascisticizing ” the 
country. If It should be a permanent fixture, it would be as a sort of 
national club for the classe dirigente. It is not ever to be an organiza- 
tion of the masses; it is to remain a strictly aristocratic group. Or 
rather, its chief business is to create a genuine fascist aristocracy. 

Whether or not the new Constitution of the Party will do this Is a 
question on which there is much difference of opinion. FarinaccI came 
out openly against the rigid hierarchical organization of the Party, with 
an argument which smacks of anything but discipline and intransigency. 
He said: “ A dictatorship of the Party over the nation, yes ; — but within 
the Party we are constitutionalists.” Camillo Pelizzi, though he is a 



132 EDUCATIONAL ROTATION OF OFFICES 

very different type of intransigent from FarinaccI, took much the same 
attitude.®® He opposed military discipline and hierarchy within the 
fascist aristocracy, as undermining the very principles of aristocracy. 
The aristocrats must govern autocratically, but they themselves must 
be perfecdy free, subjected only to the discipline of their own superior 
mentalities. On the other hand, while these intransigents defended 
liberty ( !) the liberal group on the whole welcomed the new order, as at 
least temporarily beneficent. Bottai explained,®^ with more erudition 
than conviction, that under the present circumstances the Party needed 
tightening up from above, but he emphasized those passages which 
hinted at a future day when a more free and pliable organization might 
prove practicable. He urged also, as did Umberto Gugllelmotti even 
more pointedly, that this selection from on high ’’ must be a real se- 
lection and not merely a confirmation of present cliques. In short, these 
writers hope that the eventual liberty within the regime for which they 
have stood all along, may be brought nearer by this temporary suppres- 
sion of liberty.®® Other writers in the Critica Fascista, as well as the 
general run of journalists in the more orthodox papers, heralded the 
abolition of the last vestiges of electionism ” as an eminently fascist 
reform, which brought the Party up to the standards of its own doctrine.®'*' 
Now that the government would seem no longer to need house clean- 
ing Mussolini and others have abandoned the purification ” theory for 
a “ rotation of offices theory to explain the changes in the government. 
The idea is that the new classe dingente can be best educated by a 
frequent change of personnel, so that as large a number as possible of 
the young aristocrats will have the opportunity of practical lessons 
in how to govern. The government shake-up of November 1926, oc- 
casioned directly by scandals in several departments and by the Law for 
the Defense of the State, which strengthened the dictatorship and made 
Mussolini Minister of the Interior, was officially explained on this theory. 
Though the weeding out of incompetents is no doubt a factor in the 

V. His Parlamento fascista^ in Critica FascistUy August i, 1926, and Ordine 
del Littorioy in the same journal for September 15, 1926. 

V. His La Parola ai Gio^ani^ in Critica Fascista of October 15, 1926, and 
11 Regime: Sistema CMusOy in the same journal December i, 1926. 

V. His Dofo la soj>fressione delPeliziomsmo internOy in Roma Fascistay Oc- 
tober 9, 1925. 

V. Also Germano Secret! : II regime e il fartitOy editorial in Critica Fascista, 
July 15, 1926. 

V. For example, Giacomo Lumbroso: Le nuo^e funzoni e il nuovo asfetto 
del P. W, F., in Critica Fascista, October 15, 19265 A. de Marsanich: Govema e 
Partite y in Pofolo dPltcdia, October 15, 19265 and editorials in the various papers 
of October 13 — 15, 1926. 



MORE GIOVINEZZA 


133 

process, the shift from “ purification to rotation ” is circumstantial 
evidence for the fact that there are many more candidates than jobs, 
and that the pressure on Mussolini for political employment continues 
to be so enormous that he must make openings occasionally, with or 
without other excuses. 

Both intransigents and revisionists are now perfectly certain that their 
side has won, but neither knows just why. The intransigents point 
not merely to the language employed by Turatl in his speeches, but to 
the fact that the Party has withstood all attacks and is now on a firmer 
basis than ever. They also point out that most of the old-timers, who 
disappeared for a while after the Matteotti affair, are honorably rein- 
stated, among them:Eianchi^C^ De Bono, and Balbo. 

On the other hand, the former dissidents point to the fact that these men 
no longer have a dominant role; that the political activities of the Party 
have been restricted and subordinated to the government bureaucracy; 
and that the purifications of the government have brought several of 
the revisionists into power, notably Bottai, who was made Minister of 
Corporations. There are still smoldering remains of the crisis, occa- 
sional sarcastic criticisms in the journals, or personal encounters. (As 
for instance, the duels recently fought between Suckert and the editors 
of VlmperOj because Suckert called them slackers and they called him a 
German.) Personal journals still continue to fan personal enmities. 
The intellectual differences among fascisti are as great as ever, and 
opposed schools insist on approving the government for opposite rea- 
sons. But on the whole the battle is over and both sides are reconciled 
to the way things are going, though they will never be reconciled to 
each other. 

The decision from now on to admit into the Party only the Advance 
Guardists, brings the junior departments of fascism into prominence and 
fixes attention on the coming generation. The Balilla, directed by Agno- 
letti of Florence, is the juvenile organization of boys and girls, and the 
Advance Guard, founded by Luigi Freddi, Is the organization of boys 
14 to 18, preparatory to their admission into the fascL These organiza- 
tions are growing rapidly and are really working a revolution. They 
are very similar to the American Boy Scouts. They have their costumes, 
hikes, drills, sports, etc. Their chief importance lies first in their 
physical and athletic education, and secondly in their making patriotism 
attractive and vital. Recently it was decided to put militia officers at 
the heads of these organizations and to give them a more serious ” 
character. But the seriousness is ceremonial. Heretofore there was no 
secular organization which captivated the imaginations and commanded 
the enthusiasm of the youth of the nation, and what patriotic exercises 



THE MILITIA 


13+ 

and studies the public schools afforded were comparatively ineffective in 
producing national sentiment. Now all this is changed, and the state, 
as well as the Church, has a means of making itself a dominating force, 
not merely an abstract conception. In the universities, of course, the 
fascist organizations are particularly strong and represent the combined 
force of a fraternity and an athletic club and a so-called literary circle. 
The shift of relative strength in fascism to these non-political organiza- 
tions of the younger generation comes out strikingly from a comparison 
of the figures of October 1926 and those of the previous year. 


ig2$ jg 26 

No. of Fasci di Combattimento 9,000 

No. members in Fasci di C ombattimento . . . 700,000 938,000 

No. members in Advance Guard 90,000 211,000 

No. members in Balilla 70,000 269,000 

No. members in Women’s Organizations . . . 25,000 3.QOO 


Secretary Turati’s report for 1927 shows a continuation' of tms ten- 
dency. Membership in the fasci went up about 90,000. Most of these 
were graduates from the Advance Guard. During the year, 2,000 offi- 
cers and 30,000 members were expelled from the fasci in connection with 
the purification ” policy. In the meantime the Advance Guard and 
Balilla had more than doubled, and the feminine branches showed the 
following registration: Feminine fasci — 76,000; Feminine junior or- 
ganizations — 147,000. The University groups numbered 8,800, On 
March 23, 1928, 80,000 more young fascisti graduated from the Advance 
Guard into the fasci. 

The third great organ of the fascist state, besides the government and 
the Party, is the Militia. We have already noted that even before the 
March on Rome the foundations for the militia had been laid. But it 
was so obviously an armed force in the hands of the Party used as a 
threat against other parties, that it seemed impossible to embody it per- 
manently into the state. The opposition, of course, hoped Mussolini 
would dismiss it entirely, after he had dismissed it from Rome; and 
some of the dissidents, like Misuri, wanted to keep it localized, squads of 
volunteers for emergencies, as in the early days. But Mussolini put an 
end to such ideas by his brusque: ‘^Whoever touches the Militia, gets 
lead.” It did not take long for Mussolini to develop the theory that there 
was room for a third armed force in the state, midway between the police 
and the army. The army, he said, must devote itself exclusively to the 
sacred task of carrying on or preparing for war and should never be called 
on for police duty. The regular police, he said, had their hands full with 
their regular function of keeping public order. But by dint of cir- 



THE MILITIA 


^35 

cumstancesj not of will/^ he said, there was need now for a political 
police.” He abolished the Royal Guards, which Nitti had created during 
the bolshevist crisis as a special police, and theoretically substituted 
the militia which was of course many times larger and more expensive. 

The first big job which was found for the political police ” was the 
policing of the railroads, guarding stations, assisting conductors on the 
trains, protecting freight from robbers, and weeding out communists and 
other railroad nuisances. This occupies several tens of thousands of 
militiamen, practically all of them regular railroad employees. A similar 
organization was built up for the ports. Two legions were sent to Lybia 
to fight the African rebels. Since 1926, when serious incidents occurred 
on the French border, about 3,000 black shirts have been employed as 
boundary police. But the great bulk of the militia, of course, has no em- 
ployment and is not mobilized except for review purposes. They have 
their Sunday morning marches and drills; their holiday celebrations and 
rituals and their sports. 

Every now and then they find or create emergencies and rehearse their 
squadrists exploits. Though Mussolini had condemned all squadrist vio- 
lence since the March on Rome with persistence and occasionally with 
vehemence, he had been either unwilling or unable to put a stop to it 
in practice. During the first few months of the regime he excused it, 
saying, It is impossible in three months’ time to take young men who 
have been accustomed for two years to a very special gymnastics and 
to make them into lead soldiers. ... It was impossible to say to these 
men: ^ Go home now, it is all over.’ First of all because this would have 
been an enormous ingratitude, and secondly because it would have been 
dangerous.” Since then, however, Mussolini has been increasingly 
strict about squadrism, and in January 1927 in his circular to the pre- 
fects he went so far as to order the regular police to arrest any fascist 
squadrists without exception, and he held the police responsible for 
fascist disorders. The only serious disorders of this kind recently have 
been reprisals taken after the attempts on Mussolini’s life and other 
anti-fascist acts. But this is due not so much to the fact that the fascisti 
have become orderly as that the opposition has greatly diminished and 
what there is, is powerless to show itself. 

The militia was almost immediately coordinated with the other armed 
forces, but it was not immediately subjected to the King. Mussolini ex- 
plained (June 8, 1923) that it seemed unfitting that a volunteer army 
obviously in the service of a party should be headed by the King, who 
represented the whole nation. Hence it was merely attached to the 
Ministry of the Interior. A year later, however, yielding to the opposi- 

Mussolini: La Nuova PoUdcay I, pp. 15 1—2. 



THE MILITIA 


136 

tion which demanded the separation of the militia and the Party, the 
militia took the oath of loyalty to the King and became theoretically one 
of the regular armed forces of the monarchy. It was to provide pre- 
military and post-military training for the youth of the nation ! Thus it 
supplemented the work of the army. 

The theory was easier than the practice. From the very start there 
had been friction. Gerieral Diaz, Mussolini’s first Minister of War, had 
refused to accept one of the militia generals into the Ministry under him. 
The regular army officers refused to regard the militia officers as equals, 
and the militia officers adopted a very superior air. It soon became 
known that inferior army officers or even men without military training 
were being given high commissions In the militia. To add insult to 
injury, medals, crosses and other honors were distributed freely to the 
officers of the militia for their services in the revolution.” Even Fari- 
nacci, who had not fought in the War at all, got his croix de guerre. Rela- 
tions between army officers and militia officers became very strained 
and for a time it looked as though a civil war would break out for fair. 
The tension was alleviated by a militia reform, which made it impossible 
for army men to better their rank by joining the militia, and which al- 
lowed only ex-army officers to have high militia commands. At present 
relations between army and militia are quite cordial. 

Another trouble broke out after the MatteottI affair. In their annual 
convention at Assisi in July 1924, the War Veterans Associations adopted 
a resolution, framed by Viola, to the effect that they would continue to 
cooperate with the fascisti on condition that the government condemn 
absolutely these mad Illegalities and that the state exercise its authority 
in conformity to the tradition and spirit of the risorgimento and with 
an increased spirit and energy for work in the Interests of a regenerated 
patriotism.” This mild rebuke was bitterly resented by the fascisti/fot 
they counted on the loyalty of the War Veterans as a matter of course. 
The split was made worse when in many cities the soldiers absented 
themselves from the militia parades on October 28, in celebration of 
the March on Rome. In retaliation the militia broke up a number of 
soldiers’ parades on the national military holiday, November 4. This 
led to an even stronger protest by the Veterans against fascist violence. 
A few days later a letter was published, written a year previously by 
Italo Balbo, Commanding General of the Militia, in which fascisti had 
been ordered outright to commit violences. It caused such a scandal 
that he was forced to resign. This appeased the general Indignation 
somewhat, but not so much as it might have done had not Mussolini 
praised Balbo so cordially when he accepted the resignation. Balbo is 
now Minister of Aviation. 



THE MILITIA 


^37 

There was more or less trouble in the organization of the militia until 
October 9, 1926^ when Mussolini assumed personal command. In doing 
so he sent one telegram of devotion and submission to the King, and 
another to his Black Shirts, which read: Today I assume the command 
of the Militia. You must certainly understand the import of this deed. 
The order is: Absolute and unquestioning obedience and be ready always 
and everywhere to defend our regime which today is our country. . . . 
Raise your standards and your rifles with the cry of our unconquerable 
faith: Viva il Fascismo! A not ! " 



CHAPTER IV 


SYNDICALISM AND THE CORPORATE STATE 

L The Convergence of Syndicalism and Nationalism 

Italian syndicalism is dominated by two disillusionments : the dis^ 
covery of the increasingly bourgeois character of Italian socialism and the 
discovery of the growing conflicts between the proletariats of different 
nations. 

In 1903 two Italian professors started the theory that the trouble with 
Italian socialism was that it contained too many professors and other 
gentlemen of the lesser bourgeoisie. Take these two for instance: Pro- 
fessor Arturo Labriola was a struggling young tutor at the University 
of Naples, who, discovering that a socialist had little chance In Naples, 
moved to Milan, started a weekly, VAvanguardia Socialista^ and 
soon won a large following by preaching war on reformism and the 
bourgeoisie and back to the good old class war of Karl Marx and 
Bakunin. Professor Enrico Leone did the same thing at Rome with his 
bi-weekly II Divenire Sociale^ Rivista di Socialismo Scientifico. They 
soon gained a reputation for being unusually “learned” socialists; 
they overawed socialistic conventions by their profound discourses, and 
their books became standard reference works for other professors and 
for intellectuals in general. Labriola was almost elected to Parlia- 
ment and one of his colleagues actually was. This was a common oc- 
currence in Italian socialism, as one writer put it, “ a bourgeois who 
is active in the Socialist Party is condemned as an intruder until he 
becomes a leader.” ^ The socialism of such leaders, whether on parlia- 
ment benches, in editorial offlces or in professors^ chairs, naturally be- 
came so respectable and so “scientific” that it lost its proletarian 
character completely, for the Italian proletariat In general could not read, 
and the minority who could found it difficult to understand such learned 
literature. In short, the proletariat was much discussed by Its Intellectual 
leaders. The upshot of all this discussion was the scientific discovery that 

^ F. S. Merlino: CoUettWfsmOy Florence 1901, p. 33. 



THE SYNDICALIST REVOLT 


139 

Italy must be industrialized before it could be socialized and that the in- 
dustrialization must temporarily be carried on by the capitalist class? 

Against all this the above named professors revolted. They wanted 
to make socialism really proletarian. Accordingly Labriola took as his 
comrade a genuine son of labor, a pleasant fat ex-lieutenant of the 
army, named Mocchl. Together they made enough of an impression 
on the socialist congresses of 1904 at Brescia and Bologna to plan a 
general strike in September, the first general strike ever called in Italy. 
Unfortunately, however, Labriola’s stalwart comrade, shortly after the 
Bologna congress and before the strike, married an actress and went on 
a long honeymoon to North and South America, from which he never 
returned to Italian politics. Nevertheless the strike was called in North- 
ern Italy and spread rapidly through the east and south, where Leone 
and his southern co-workers had succeeded in organizing agricultural 
discontent. The net result of the strike was that the government was 
frightened, professional classes annoyed by its inconveniences and the 
merchants and lesser middle class were angered by the financial losses 
which they more than any one else had suffered. The next elections went 
against the socialists and the next socialist congress went against 
Labriola and his intransigent Marxists.’’ A bitter strife now ensued 
for leadership within the Party. The Labriola-Leone faction organized 
their followers into syndicates and with redoubled energy attacked the 
parliamentarianism and political socialism of the majority faction under 
Filippo Turati. At this time the writings of Sorel and the French 
syndicalists were being popularized, so that soon in theory as well as in 
practice the divergent directions in Italian socialism became evident. 
In the spring of 1907, the syndicalists openly left the Socialist Party, 
following the example of the French, and devoted themselves to the 
General Confederation of Labor, organized in 1906, which soon became 
powerful, especially in Romagna. In the summer of 1908, under the 
brilliant leadership of De Ambris, who burst suddenly into prominence, 
an agrarian strike broke out in and around Padua. The strikers, con- 
fronted by a powerful organization of proprietors, and abandoned in the 

^ Take for example the following written not by a socialist but by an idealistic 
nationalist: Today the socialist party has all the appearance of the liberal party. 
. . . The socialist party and socialism* are two distinct things. . . . The socialist 
party ... is the liberal party; it holds the place which the latter has ingloriously 
abandoned in order to serve the industrial and agrarian and bureaucratic bourgeoisies 
and the clerical peasantry. . . . 

The socialist party is simply the mirror of the Italian bourgeoisie. Who kicked 
out Mussolini, if not the bourgeoisie of socialism? We have the most stupid socialism 
of Europe for we know we have the most stupid bourgeoisie.” (Prezzolini in La 
Voce^ April 13, 1914, p. 5^, and October 28, i 9 i 4 > P* az. 



140 REVOLUTIONARY WARS 

crisis of the Confederation of Labor itself, were forced to surrender. De 
Ambris took a trip to America. The Socialist Congress of Florence, 
shortly after, explicitly denounced syndicalism and expelled the syndical- 
ists from the party. Nevertheless the socialists established cordial rela- 
tions with the Syndicalist Confederation of Labor; for bourgeois leaders 
of the two kinds of socialism had discovered that they were no longer 
rivals for power, there being ample room for both. Soon the theory was 
elaborately spread by both kinds of professors, that socialism really 
needed two legs to stand on: the political leg, the Socialist Party, and 
the economic leg. Syndicalism. And so the two movements peacefully 
supplemented '' each other until the issue of war and nationalism again 
divided them. 

As early as 1908 a group of nationalists, led by Viana, had attempted 
to gain labor support in the district of Turin by founding nationalistic 
syndicates. To their weekly periodical, II T ricolore^ some of the ablest 
nationalist writers contributed. These syndicates were based on (a) 
class struggle only within the limits allowed by national solidarity, 
(b) direct action in the economic sphere without any intervention by 
government organs and without any opposition to the state by the 
syndicates. But this movement was condemned in 1910 by both the 
nationalist and the syndicalist organizations. In 1911 however, when 
the Tripoli War broke out, and to a greater extent during the World 
War, Italian syndicalism became increasingly nationalistic. The official 
Socialist Party and many of the older leaders of the Confederation 
of Labor were against war, but by their negative tactics they attempted 
to evade the issue. In theory and in practice as well they afforded neither 
encouragement nor radical opposition to the conduct of the wars. The 
younger syndicalists on the other hand, with their Sorelian philosophy 
of direct action and violence, had less trouble in reconciling themselves to 
war and some of them even became ardent nationalists and imperialists.® 
Labriola himself went so far as to say during the Tripoli War, Let 
it be clearly understood that we are fighting not only against the little 
handful of Turks in Tripoli, nor against the naval clique of the Darda- 
nelles, but that we are fighting against the intrigues, the threats, the 

® “ Revolutionary syndicalism has been well called a form of workers’ imperial- 
ism, since it reveals the same tendencies of energy and conquest which appear in 
capitalistic imperialism, the same distrust for sentimental and humanitarian democracy, 
the same einphasis on the importance of wealth and of the free play of economic forces. 
Its aim lies not in the realization of a fixed type of society, as is the aim of the old- 
fashioned socialisms, but in the ever wider and unrestrained development of the forces 
which are latent in the heart of the proletariat, in the exercise of those faculties which 
can increase the proletariat’s vigor, vitality, and culture,” (Arturo Labriola: 11 Social- 
ismo Confemforaneo, Naples 1922, p. 344.) 



REVOLUTIONARY WARS 


141 

snares, the monies and the arms of plutocratic Europe which will not 
allow the lesser nations to hazard a single deed or a single word that 
might jeopardize its iron hegemony.” ^ The idea soon took hold that 
Italy’s wars were proletarian wars, that poor Italy must wage a “class 
struggle ” with its richer neighbors. In this spirit many of the syndi- 
calist leaders threw themselves whole-heartedly into the wars, thus 
isolating themselves completely from the Reformist majority of the 
Socialist Party as well as from the Confederation of Labor. 

The best example of this sort of syndicalist was Filippo CorridonI, who 
is now hailed as one of the pioneers and martyrs of fascism. He was 
a feverish, violent soul in a delicate body, with the romantic tragic 
bearing of Mazzinl. His occasional tears and his customary bitter laugh, 
his fierce hatred and flaming oratory made him a powerful proletarian 
leader. An admirer of the heroes of the Italian risorgimento, he was 
also profoundly influenced by the writings of Sorel, especially by 
SoreFs pessimism, his emphasis on the inevitability of violence and 
suffering, his theory of the moral degradation of the bourgeoisie and of 
the heroic potentialities in the proletariat. After the war of 1911 he 
began to develop a new national philosophy for Italian syndicalism, a 
philosophy which was later revived and expanded by the jascisti. 
According to him It was the moral duty and tragic fate of the Italian 
proletariat to continue the struggle for liberty which the Italian 
bourgeoisie had begun in the risorgimento. He saw himself as the 
successor of Mazzini, Pisacane and Garibaldi. In this setting the whole 
concept of classes and class struggle underwent a transformation. 
Classes, he maintained, are historic, not primarily economic, and only 
a historically minded philosophical tradition, such as the Italian, can do 
justice to the true import of class struggle. The bourgeoisie is a remnant 
of that degenerate powerful Europe, which for centuries had dominated 
Italy, and from which the risorgimento had only partially freed it. Not 
merely political liberty, but, what is more, a spontaneous, free national 
culture is possible in Italy only if the proletariat can assert itself. But 
the proletariat too, in CorrldonFs sense, is not the Marxist, economic 
proletariat. He had a genuine Sorelian contempt for the masses. The 
“historic” proletariat is rather that heroic minority, that proletarian 
aristocracy, that has the sense of its mission and is willing to fight and 
suffer. He had little confidence in the ability of this small class to gain 
a really decisive victory over the powerful philistines; but, even as 
Sorel held up the “ myth ” of the general strike, so CorridonI preached 
the myth of the “ revolutionary war for liberty ” as an ideal which might 
inspire the true Italian to heroism. The class struggle must be intensely 
^ lik La ScmfUla of Naples, October 11, 191 1. 



142 GROWTH OF NATIONAL SYNDICATES 

national, waged by a young Italy, conscious of its rich cultural heritage 
against the international oppression of a more wealthy but more degener- 
ate Europe. 

It was in this spirit that he and his syndicalist followers marched 
through the streets of Milan in June 1914 waving the national tri- 
color, singing the hymn of the risorgimento, crying Viva Vltalia, and 
proclaiming the beginning of Italy’s revolutionary war of redemption. 
Similar insurrections took place In Genoa, Turin and Bologna, and led 
to seven days of violence and bloodshed. But the grand risorgimento 
went down in history as merely the red week.’’ A few months later, 
when the World War broke out, Corridoni immediately accepted it as the 
continuation of his cause in an unexpected form. He and a large 
group of his followers joined the Garibaldi brigade on the Argonne 
front. When Italy entered the war, he returned and fought and died 
on the Italian front. 

Meanwhile a young man named Edmondo Rossoni had returned from 
the United States where he had been trying to organize the Italian 
L W- W. Though he did not return in order to join the army, for he 
lacked Corridoni’s love of physical warfare, he returned to preach 
nationalism to the Italian worker. He tells of his own disillusionment as 
follows : 

^^In 1912 when I was organizing Italian workers in North America, 
far from my country, I felt that it is absolutely necessary to spread class 
nationalism, for we must defend not merely workers but Italians. 
. . . We who for many years have lived in foreign countries and in 
our long and bitter exile have learned to know and to live the life of an 
Italian removed from his native land, have begun to understand and 
feel how the fortunes of Italian workers are indissolubly bound to the 
fortunes of the Italian nation. . . . We have seen our workers ex- 
ploited and held in contempt not only by capitalists but even by their 
revolutionary comrades of other countries. Hence we know by ex- 
perience that internationalism is but a fiction and hypocrisy. There- 
fore we must above all work for our country and love our country.” ® 

In 1915 he had founded a journal in New York called UltdLia 
Nostra with the motto ''Not to deny, but to win our country” {La 
P atria non si nega, si conquista). During the war he served as secre- 
tary to the Chambers of Labor in several Italian cities and was active 
in the Comitato sindacale italiano, the successor to Corridoni’s organi- 
zation* In May 1918 this Comitato was transformed into the Unione 
itdiana del lavoro^ and Rossoni immediately became its secretary and 
his motto became the battle cry. 

® Rossoni: Le idee deUa ricostrmioney pp. 10, 56, 59. 



GROWTH OF NATIONAL SYNDICATES 143 

The aim of this organization was to unite those workers’ syndicates 
which intend to carry on their .action independently of any political 
party whatsoever/’ but it was soon evident that most of the leaders 
and many of the syndicates adhering to it were republican. In fact 
the Mazzini revolutionary republicans and the nationalistic syndical- 
ists soon became almost indistinguishable. The real aim of the Union 
was to be revolutionary and its chief opponent, curiously enough, was the 
great Confederation of Labor itself. For during the war the majority 
of the Confederation of Labor had failed to espouse the patriotic 
cause of the Corridoni group, and had affiliated itself with the reformist 
Socialist Party. And during the economic and political crisis of 1919- 
20y the C, G. L, under Labriola and De Ambrls, etc., became one 
of the mainstays of the government, doing all it could to discourage the 
communistic revolts of local Chambers of Labor, aiding Giolitti in 
conciliating the workers who had occupied the factories and in general 
opposing itself to violence, urging instead democratic and political 
methods. 

Rossoni’s Unione italiana del lavoro therefore was the champion of 
the strange combination: patriotism and revolution. Hence it found 
itself in opposition to both the communist international reds,” and 
the reformist Socialist Party entrenched in the government, to say noth- 
ing of the more conservative parties of the country. It made little 
progress among the industrial workers, who were dominated by the 
internationalistic bolshevist group, but found a foothold among rural 
workers and small proprietors; especially in Romagna and Tuscany, 
the stronghold of the revolutionary republican patriots, who were in 
that region the chief political enemies of the socialists. 

In its platform we read: “The Unione italiana del lavoro wages 
war against salaried capitalism and against all the institutions which 
maintain that system, appealing directly to the organized labor- 
ing class to take over production and distribution and the exchange 
of wealth.” 

“The Unione italiana del lavoro^ while it carries on its work in 
harmony with the principle of the international solidarity of laborers of 
those nations which know how to be friendly and which are not instru- 
ments of tyranny over peoples and classes, will never depart from the 
general conditions necessary for the development and liberty of Italy, 
whom the working class must not betray but must rather win by 
radically renewing its institutions.” 

In March 1919, when Rossoni’s Unione needed friends badly, it found 
a new one at Milan. Mussolini, who was then organizing his first 
fasdOy and who also needed friends badly, suggested an alliance between 



144 growth of national SYNDICATES 

fascism and syndicalism. He asked the Unione to declare openly against 
(a) bolshevism, (b) the general strike. If it were willing to do so, he 
saw no reason why they might not cooperate. On the eve of the Na- 
tional Congress of the Unione, Mussolini suggested the following synthe- 
sis of the fascist economic program and of syndicalism: ^^We are 
opposed to ‘ merely professional suffrage.^ If a representation only of 
ideas is insufficient, neither is a representation only of interests adequate. 
Ours is ^integral representation’ in which the citizen not only Is not 
annulled but by a system of national councils enhances his possibilities 
for action, for initiative, for control in the political and economic manage- 
ment of the nation. I open the discussion. The argument is interest- 
ing.^^ ® But this flirting with the syndicalists received little encourage- 
ment at the time; for fascism was then a liability rather than an asset 
to any kind of labor organization. 

After the collapse of the so-called red revolution in the fall of 1920, 
which left the industrial workers in a bad state of disorganization, 
patriotic syndicates began to grow rapidly. Despairing of the efficacy of 
communist leadership, revolutionists of all classes flocked into them. In 
agriculture, where the distinction between employer and employee is 
less clear, Rossoni even succeeded in organizing mixed syndicates, 
in which small proprietors and peasants would belong to the same 
syndicate. In fact, as the peasants flocked into the national syndicates, 
the proprietors and small tenant farmers became alarmed. They saw 
the unions which they had believed killed and buried, resurrected al- 
most over night, flying the national tri-color instead of the red flag, 
and ready once more to offer an almost solid front. In this fearful 
situation, partly voluntarily, partly by the force of some of the fascist 
squadrists (In Romagna especially), the landlords suddenly conceived an 
unheard-of sympathy for their peasants, joined their syndicates and 
chimed in on the chorus of the solidarity of producers.” Some of these 
nationalistic syndicates were the direct result of the work of fascu 
Around Florence and Siena, for example, the fascist peasants formed 
several such syndicates, under the name of Fratellanza Colonica. 
Usually, however, these were dominated by conservative elements and by 
the sons of landowners. This was the case in Perugia, for example, where 
Alfredo MIsurFs Unione stndacale del lavoro contained few peasants 
and fewer laborers, but attracted the middle classes in both town and 
country. 

In Romagna and Emilia, however, less conservative squadrists had 
helped organize the Confederazione italiana sindacati economici (the 
CISE, so-called), which was supposed to operate independently of all 
® VOra del sindacalismo, in Pofolo ePItalia, March 27, 1919. 



SYNDICALISTIC NATIONALISTS 


145 

political parties. One of its agents, Pighetti, was sent to Perugia where 
he soon wrested the control of that syndicate from Misuri’s hands and 
made it more of a laboring-man’s organization. The CISE soon failed 
completely, partly because of its attempt to carry on a purely economic 
non-political policy, partly because it was too proletarian to attract 
the landed classes and too nationalistic to attract the laborers, and 
partly because of the prevailing spirit of local autonomy among the 
various syndicates, whose local leaders were jealous of their independ- 
ence. Nevertheless nationalist syndicates continued to grow. At first 
they were predominantly organizations of small farmers and of the 
lower middle class, but gradually agricultural laborers entered as well. 
It was not until after 1922 that any considerable number of industrial 
laborers joined them. 

While these developments were transpiring in the labor field, an- 
other series of events suddenly added prestige to the syndicates. 
D’Annunzio and his band had taken Fiume, and had published his 
constitution for the Fiume district, the Carta della Reggenza Italtana 
'del Carnaro. This famous document outlined a system of ten corpora- 
tions ” into which all the citizens of the state were to be organized, 
as follows: (i) laborers (industrial and rural), artisans and small 
farmers; (2) technicians and administrators; (3) merchants; (4) 
employers (industrial and agricultural); (5) public employees; (6) 
^^the intellectual flower of the people”; (7) professional men; (8) The 
Cooperative Society; (9) mariners; (10) the “mystic servants of the 
civic sanctuary.” These corporations were explained to be a revival 
of the medieval Italian institutions by that name. In their hands was the 
regulation of the whole economic life of the state, of several philanthropic 
functions and of public ceremonies. The effect of this document on 
Italian syndicalism can easily be imagined. Nationalism and syndical- 
ism soon joined hands in corporationism. A Comitato nazionale di azione 
sindacale dannunziana was formed, and many of the most important 
nationalist leaders became converted to national syndicalism. Among 
these should be mentioned Enrico Corradlni, Roberto Forges-Davanzati 
(who had been a syndicalist before he became a nationalist), Alfredo 
Rocco and Dino Grandi, all of them now conspicuous fascist leaders. 
Francesco Coppola continued hostile; he found syndicalism too mate- 
rialistic. 

While the nationalists were thus approaching syndicalism, a large 
number of old syndicalist leaders were turning toward nationalism. 
The veteran professors Labriola and Leone returned to the socialisl 
camp, but many of the most active leaders became either fascisti 01 
national syndicalists or both, among them, Michele Bianchi, Angelc 



146 FASCISM THE SYNTHESIS 

Olivieri Olivetti, Guido Pighetti, Sergio Panunzio, Agostino Lanzillo 

and Paolo Orano. 

On the invitation of Rossoni the leaders of these various groups of 
national syndicalists met together on October 17? 19^^? at Ferrara, 
where Rossoni was secretary of the Confederation of Syndicates. A 
plan of union of all these groups was discussed and a national con- 
gress of syndicates called for Bologna, January 24, 1922. In the^ mean- 
time, November 1921, at the Fascist Congress an alliance with the 
syndicalists was discussed and Michele Bianchi, then Secretary General 
of the newly made Party, was sent to the Bologna Syndicalist Congress 
to make the offer of union. As a result of these moves the Unione 
federate italiana delle corporazioni was formed, and the Bologna Con- 
gress passed the following resolution: 

“The Syndicalist Convention of the 24th of January 1922, assembled 
at Bologna, declares the necessity of organizing all those syndicates whose 
programs and activities are essentially the same as the program and 
platform of the National Fascist Party into national corporations headed 
by a powerful central body, the federal Italian union of Corporations. 
In order to explain the character and scope of the new syndicalist organi- 
zation the convention maintains the following chief principles: 

“ I. Labor entitles a man to the sovereign and legitimate exercise of a 
full and useful citizenship in the social order; 

“ 2, Labor is the result of forces harmoniously united in the process 
of creating, perfecting and enhancing whatever constitutes the material, 
moral and spiritual welfare of man; 

“ 3. All persons irrespectively are to be considered laborers who in any 
way whatsoever employ or devote their actions to the above-mentioned 
ends, and accordingly their organization into syndicates should attempt 
to include all such persons without any of the ostracism employed by 
demagogues, but with the requisite differentiations and variety of 
groups; 

“ 4. The nation, taken as the highest synthesis of all the material and 
spiritual values of the race, is above individuals, occupations and classes. 
Individuals, occupations and classes are the instruments which the 
nation employs to reach Its greater glory. The interests of individuals, 
of professions and of classes acquire the stamp of legitimacy when they 
come to be embodied In the plan of the higher national interests; 

“ 5. Syndicalistic organization, which is the Instrument of defense and 
of conquest for labor against all forms of parasitism, must tend to 
develop within its organization a sense of the willingness on the part of 
syndicalistic action to fit into the complicated network of social relations, 
and a wider consciousness of the fact that Country and Society are over 
and above classes. 



FASCISM THE SYNTHESIS 


H7 

^^The national corporations headed by the Federal Italian Union of 
Corporations are the following: 

(a) The national corporation of Industrial labor. 

(b) The national corporation of agricultural labor. 

(c) The national corporation of commerce. 

(d) The national corporation of the middle and intellectual classes. 

(e) The national corporation of seamen.^’ 

The name of this consolidated organization, whose secretary Rossoni 
became, was later changed to the Confederazione delle Corporazioni 
sindacali fasciste, and after the March on Rome it became an integral 
part of the fascist regime. 

Though the majority of the d’Annunzian nationalists followed Ros- 
soni into the fascist camp, some of the most ardent, notably the veteran 
Alceste De Ambris, maintained their independence, and continued the 
Unione italiana del lavoro as a republican d’Annunzian organization. 
The national federation of seamen also adhered to d’Annunzio until re- 
cently, when they aihliated themselves with Rossoni’s fascist Con- 
federation, though they are still in a measure an independent organi- 
zation. 

This in outline is the story of how fascism and syndicalism came to 
be united. Fascism, as we saw in a previous chapter, needed labor sup- 
port and syndicalism needed political weapons. It was a forced mar- 
riage, and both parties had to, and still have to, make large concessions 
and adjustments, as a result of which both are being radically trans- 
formed. For syndicalism it meant that its leaders had concluded from 
their brief but turbulent experience that in Italy a purely economic 
syndicalism is impracticable. Conflicting interests among the various 
leaders and among the various groups of workers, as well as be- 
tween leaders and workers, kept the movement in continual turmoil. 
And even if it were possible to unify Italian labor, Its bargaining power 
is too weak to force capital by purely economic pressure to make per- 
ceptible concessions, since labor is the one thing which is always plenti- 
ful in Italy. The Italian worker is too near the bare maintenance level 
and too destitute of funds to be able to wage efFectlve economic war- 
fare. Only by intimidating the government could labor hope to get 
any power over capital. Hence, if the paradox of a really revolution- 
ary government could be found, syndicalism might succeed. This 
paradox was found in fascism. Though the syndicalist leaders were at 
the time very loath to -sacrifice their autonomy to a political alliance, they 
stooped to conquer. After the March on Rome, they not only were re- 
conciled to their political partner, but became the very life and soul of 
the fascist bureaucracy. 



DISCOVERY OF NEW ORIGINS 


148 

For fascism, on the other hand, this marriage meant that its leanings 
toward a liberalistic economics and its obligations toward the bour- 
geoisie would have to sacrificed eventually to a politics of government 
control over labor organization and thus, indirectly, to a detailed regula- 
tion of the economic life of the nation. As we shall see, both parties 
were soon forced to approach what each had rebelled against — state 
socialism. 

IL The Reconstruction of Syndicalist Theories 

Before we can proceed to these later developments, it Is necessary 
to examine more closely the general principles and theories to which the 
events we have just narrated gave birth. For these theories are not 
merely rationalizations of facts already accomplished, but also exhi- 
bitions of the aims and hopes which became active forces in the years 
following. Needless to say, events of so revolutionary a character de- 
manded a radical reconstruction of ideas. But the reconstruction of 
ideas went far beyond what was demanded by the events. We have 
already noted the elements of this new ideology in Corridoni, in d’An- 
nunzio’s Constitution for Fiume and in the Resolution of the Bologna 
Convention of 1922; we must now follow it into its various ramifications. 

The fascist theory of syndical organization is supposed to be 
thoroughly Italian in origin, but it was really imported directly from the 
French positivists and French Catholics, who had used it for similar 
purposes. However, the terms in which it is formulated and the appli- 
cation given it are quite Italian.’’ In general its origins are distinct 
from the orthodox Sorelian syndicalism. 

Of the two great philosophic schools which for a century have been 
contending in Italy, the positivist and the idealist, the latter had been 
predominant among the syndicalists. One reason for this, of course, is 
the hostility between positivism and class syndicalism in France. An- 
other is the fact that nationalism and positivism were conservative allies 
in the industrial north, while idealism and syndicalism were both move- 
ments of revolt, the former more prominent in the north and the latter 
in the south. Benedetto Croce was a close friend of Sorel and had been 
a leading writer on syndicalism, while syndicalism was still closely 
allied with socialism; and more recently Gentile had sponsored syndical- 
ism in his general attempt to establish idealistic nationalism as a rival 
to the northern, Corradini type of nationalist theory. A group of 
young idealists, as we saw in an earlier chapter, were among the first 
interventionists when the war broke out, and many of them espoused 
cf. also Relaziofie deUa Commissione FresidenziaU^ pp, 106—7. 



DISCOVERY OF NEW ORIGINS 


149 

the cause of national syndicalism. Hence, when nationalism and fascism 
invaded the syndicalist camp, a considerable mixture of positivism, 
Marxism, neo-Catholicism, and philosophical idealism resulted. But 
this mixed philosophical orientation has not entangled syndicalism to 
any great extent in metaphysical issues. National even more than 
orthodox syndicalism is decidedly a practical not an intellectual move- 
ment. But the practical conflicts within the movement, to which we 
shall presently proceed, are in no small measure traceable to theoreti- 
cal confusions. And when these practical issues have been decided, 
probably the theory will also clear up. Meanwhile, however, the 
structure of fascist syndicalist theory remains a mixture; its general 
outlines are positivistic, with an admixture of the idealistic theory of the 
state and of the Sorelian theory of class organization. 

As early as 1910 Sergio Panunzio and several other writers on 
syndicalist theory had begun to call attention to the theories of Durk- 
heim and Duguit, and to regard them as revivals of medieval economic 
organization. In ^^Syndicalism and the Middle Ages (1910) Panun- 
zio wrote Duguit has constructed a theory of general and integral 
syndicalism, a syndicalism which extends indiscriminately to all actually 
existing social classes. Every social class, according to Duguit, should 
be organized Into its own syndicate and collective agreements should 
bind the syndicates together, and at the top of these syndicates should be 
the state, representing the effective majority of the individuals com- 
prising the various social groups.” And later he wrote: “Duguit, the 
first exponent in France, beside Sorel, of integral syndicalism, had al- 
ready defined a class in precise terms, as ‘ a group of Individuals among 
whom there exists an unusually close interdependence because they ex- 
ercise the same function in the division of social labor.’ This is an 
idea which derives from the sociological theory of Durkheim, ... a 
theory which differs, I believe, very little in essence from the organic 
theory of Plato’s Republic (i.e. of the strong and hierarchical state 
which Is today the aim of fascism). It is obviously but a short step from 
Plato’s Republic to the corporationist theory of fascist syndicalism.” ® 

Among the nationalists whose vague enthusiasm for syndicalism was 
due to the intimate connection between Sorel and the Catholic authori- 
tarianism of the action frangaise, Enrico Corridini suggested the pos- 
slbilty of a national syndicalism as early as 1908, but Alfredo Rocco 
seems to have been the first to revive the term “ corporation ” and to 
have robbed syndicalism of its revoluntionary implications. In the 
Idea Nazionale of May 23, 1914, shortly before Corrldoni’s general 
strike, Rocco wrote: “To us syndicalism appears to be a form of eco- 
® In Fofolo d^Italia, May 12, 1923. 



DISCOVERY OF NEW ORIGINS 


150 

nomic organization which, if cut loose from its socialistic trunk and 
robbed of the revolutionary and anarchistic tendencies which until now 
have characterized it, might be a useful instrument in the service of the 
nation. 

We claim that syndicalism can be national, just as it is now anti- 
national or Catholic. The form in which a national syndicalism might 
be realized would be that of mixed syndicates, a name found in Belgium 
and Germany, but an ancient Italian institution, for it is nothing but 
our ancient corporationism. And we propose simply to substitute our 
name for the foreign one, and to speak simply of Corporations. The 
Corporations, wjiich were overthrown by the individualism of the nat- 
ural rights philosophy and by the equalitarianism of the French Revolu- 
tion, may well live again in the social ideas of Italian nationalism. . . . 

“ In the Corporations, we have not an absurd equality, but discipline 
and differences. In the corporations all participate in production, being 
associated in a genuine and fruitful fraternity of classes.” 

Again in 1920, at the time of the Fiume Constitution which popularized 
corporations, Rocco wrote an article in Politica, in which this theory 
of integral syndicalism was developed in full. In his later version the 
French syndicalists are quite neglected, but the French Revolution 
remains as the villain of the historical plot. According to Rocco and 
his modified positivism, human history is divided into alternate periods 
of organization and of disintegration. In the former the state dominates, 
while in the latter individuals or particular groups and associations 
assert their Independence. In the former, civilizations are cultivated, in 
the latter they are destroyed in order to make room for new ones. The 
early Middle Ages were a disintegrating period, whereas the 17th and 
i8th centuries were an organic period when the guilds or corporations, 
controlled by strong states, really regulated economic processes and 
kept society integrated. But in the French Revolution the bourgeoisie 
destroyed these corporations, destroyed the sovereign state as well and 
substituted a void of meaningless individual rights and popular sover- 
eignty. The industrial revolution merely accentuated the social dis- 
equilibrium thus generated and economic liberalism erected the helpless- 
ness of the state Into a positive doctrine. Socialism, though It pretended 
-to establish a new order in place of this anarchy, really exag- 
gerated the evils by pitting ungovemed classes against each other. 
Fascism has Inaugurated a new organic period not merely by reassert- 
ing the sovereign state, but more especially by reviving the medieval 
corporate machinery of economic control. 

Other nationalists and also syndicalists have discovered in fascist 
syndicalism a continuation of the work of Mazzini, Garibaldi, Pisacane 



A SUITABLE METAPHYSICS 


151 

and the patriotic socialism of the risorgimento, Panunzio in his recent 
writings calls Mazzini ''our great apostle’’ and the real founder of 
integral syndicalism. Sorel, he claims, rediscovered and revealed Maz- 
zini’s ethics of “ association,” his revolt against the materialistic con- 
ception of history and his faith in " associations ” as the educators and 
liberators of the common people. Dino Grandi also championed this 
view in his important speech at the Rome Fascist Congress of 1921. 

Other fascist!, jealous of their idealistic tradition and aware of Maz- 
zini’s close affiliation with positivism, have tried to make an idealist of 
jMazzini, as does Gentile, for example.® Or they show the close similar- 
ity between Mazzini’s and Hegel’s conception of associations. The at- 
tempt has even been made to prove that fascist syndicalism is the 
logical culmination of Italy’s dominant idealistic tradition from Vico 
to Cuoco to Croce.^® But all this is, of course, mere afterthought. 
National syndicalism was born of the needs of the moment, and its 
historical forefathers were discovered later. Nevertheless it is typical 
of philosophy that as soon as a practical discovery has been made for 
practical purposes it is immediately made to appear as the logical out- 
come of histo^. And the story is already going down in history that 
the Italians discovered in Sorel an idea which had long had a footing 
in Italian tradition, that they were therefore able immediately to tran- 
scend him by cultivating their own forms of thought, and that because 
of this traditional historical-mindedness of the Italian, syndicalism 
has become a political reality in Italy while it remains a philosopher’s 
dream in France. 

Dropping these polemics about origins, we may now proceed to out- 
line the theory as it was developed in Italy. 

A. 0 , Olivetti, who has browsed up and down the philosophic field 
for many years, tries to connect syndicalism with a metaphysical point 
of view and to make It appear that the universe itself has a syndical 
structure. He points out how modern science has completely upset 
the atomic point of view. Matter is not a congeries of atoms, each 
of which Is a simple independent entity. For the atom itself is a very 
complex organization of electric charges, an organic unity of energies. It 
is an orderly society, as It were, of forces in equilibrium, a microcosmic 
transcript of the associated ” bodies which constitute solar systems and 
constellations. The same may be said of cell structure in living organ- 
isms. The atomic concepts of biology have given place to organic 
ones. In psychology too, thought has been discovered to be a product 
of “social man”; and in place of the older analysis of simple ideas 

® V. Gentile: Che cosa e il fascismo, pp. 43 ff. Also Appendix No. 29, 

V. The writings of G. Montemayor. 



NATIONS AND CLASSES 


152 

being mechanically associated, modern psychology has revealed the 
mind as a function of society, of intercommunication, language, and as- 
sociation. In short, everything in the universe is association and 
association implies not the casual agglomeration of entities according 
to their chance proximities, but a union of entities in a fixed manner, 
which union determines their state of equilibrium, their forms, and 
figures, and determines them according to what might be called either 
Platonic ideas or natural laws, and which are simply the manifestations 
of reality itself. On the same plan associations of associations take 
place in ever vaster cycles, but with the same significance. . , , 

“ , . . We maintain that today it is possible up to a certain point 
and with the prudence of a critical method to discover the existence 
of a universal principle which presides over the realm of nature, over 
the realm of thought and over the realm of society; this principle, ac- 
cording to us, is that of association. Association does not mean a blind 
and casual conglomeration of individuals endowed with a certain degree 
of liberty and joined together by a fixed order inherent in their na- 
ture. . . . Theorists have been preoccupied with the Individual and the 
state and have neglected association, which is not a middle but a higher 
term and conditions the other two. The ethics of association is still 
virgin territory to be explored. . . . Only Giuseppe Mazzini grasped the 
moral and social importance of the fact of association, regarding associa- 
tion as an ultimate term of the same nature and substance as the idea 
of liberty.” 

How syndicates and their confederations fit Into this universe of as- 
sociation is too obvious to demand further exposition. Suffice it to say, 
therefore, that the syndicate state appears no longer as a mere human 
reform, but as a necessary illustration of a universal natural law. 

Leaving these metaphysical flights of Olivetti, we turn to those social 
and political ideas which are generally shared by all fascist syndicalists. 
Chief among these is the theory that the struggle between nations is 
more serious and critical than the class struggle, at least for Italy. 
The conflict of interests between the Italian worker and his neighbor 
in richer countries is much greater than that between him and his 
Italian employer. For Italy as a whole is a proletarian nation and (if 
the Marxist terminology must be retained) is engaged in a class strug- 
gle with its plutocratic oppressors. Really however, it is a Darwinian 
•struggle for existence rather than a Marxian class struggle, for on the 
fate of the Italian nation depends the very life of the Italian worker. 
If this was not obvious before the war, when emigration offered op- 

A. O. Olivetti, 11 sindacalismo come filosofia e come folitica: Unamenti M 
dniesi universale^ pp. 15, id, 21, 38, 



NATIONS AND CLASSES 


^53 

portunities for a livelihood in foreign lands^ certainly now with in- 
creased restriction by foreign governments, the Italian laborer must 
realize that he must stand or fall with his own nation and its govern- 
ment. In the face of ever increasing national competition, both economic 
and military, Italy least of all can afford the luxury of internal conflict. 
The Italian had long been accustomed to regard himself as the victim of 
foreign political oppression; now this idea must be transferred bodily 
into the economic field. Some of the jingolsts will even have it that 
bolshevism and capitalism are but two branches of Italy^s one great 
enemy, international-Jewish-finance.^^ 

. For the socialist formula of “ international solidarity and class strug- 
gle ” fascism substitutes “ inter-class solidarity and national struggle.'^ 
As a consequence of this struggle between poor Italy on the one side 
and plutocratic Europe and America on the other, the only real interest 
of the Italian worker can be to stimulate national production. The 
problem of production, not of distribution, is vital for Italy. Italy, 
being a country very poor in raw materials, can not allow itself the luxury 
of frequent and recurrent interruptions of production, and in the inter- 
national competitive strife it must seek a compensation for its poverty 
in a maximum possible utilization of its intelligence and of the energy 
of its manual labor, combined with the factors of capital and of technical 
administration.” 

To all this the socialists, of course, objected. This talk of the “ na- 
tional interest” is a pure abstraction, they said. The fascisti merely 
identify the interests of the bourgeoisie with those of the nation. To this 
charge the fascisti reply that if anything is an “ abstraction ” it is the 
Marxist notion of two fixed classes In eternal conflict. As a matter 
of fact there are an indefinite number of classes or occupational groups, 
each having its own interests. But in addition there are geographic cul- 
tural groups, no less real than purely economic groups, with conflicting 
interests and aims which imply economic conflicts. Among these groups 
are nations. Therefore anyone who expects to share in the activities 
of his national group or “ class ” must learn to regulate his other group 
interests accordingly. This is a much more complex affair than the two- 
class struggle of Marxist theory. It may require a new moral sense, 
and a severe discipline to apply it intelligently but, though difficult of 
realization and hence less attractive, such a conception of society is at 
least more realistic and more honest than the fantastic picture of 
orthodox socialism. Some fascist writers point out that so-called social- 
ism is really a pseudo-socialism,” which should be called classism 
cf. Banchelli, in Appendix No. 13. 

Senator Schanzer in speech before the Senate, March 5, 1926. 



154 


CLASS STRUGGLES 


that instead of really facing the problems of socialization squarely, it 
abandoned them for its very unsocial tactics of class struggle; that 
fascism has therefore fallen heir to all the concrete problems which 
socialism abandoned; and that it is at last attempting a genuinely social 
solution. 

Premising this revision in the theory of classes, few fascist syndicalists 
deny that there are class conflicts and many of them even admit an 
organized class struggle within limits. They have no objection to a 
genuine economic competition and bargaining between capital and labor, 
but they deprecate the particular forms which the class struggle had 
taken in Italy. The class conflict may continue, but it need not be 
violent. As Suckert puts it, In Italy, class hatred had taken the place 
of economic class struggle. Herein lay the whole secret of the future 
of Italian socialism. . . . Class struggle, among us, was understood 
not in an economic, but in a social sense, and it transformed the instru- 
ments of labors into daggers. Industry was like a huge belly to be dis- 
embowelled.” The strike In Italy, for reasons explained above, was 
seldom a genuine instrument for gaining advantages for labor; it almost 
always turned out to be but a violent political protest. It had a political, 
jiot an economic function. Consequently this sort of class struggle 
usually played into the hands of the bourgeoisie. Frequently employers 
themselves would encourage strikes during dull seasons, in order to 
escape unemployment charges. In any case, Italian capital was also 
organized and was generally able to exhibit far greater resources than 
Italian labor could command. As a result strikes became Increasingly 
violent, wasteful, and embittered, until, as was said above, class conflict 
degenerated Into fruitless class hatred. 

There are other contributing factors which made class relations in 
Italy particularly violent. In Italy, as in Russia, feudal class distinc- 
tions and privileges are still widely taken for granted. Employers are 
frequently brutal and usually excessively overbearing, and the impov- 
erished laborer is both economically and socially in much the same posi- 
tion as the medieval serf. Titles are generously distributed to pros- 
perous factory and land owners, and the recipients usually try to live 
up to their titles. The middle class is less in evidence than it is in north- 
ern European countries, and consequently social extremes meet con- 
tinually. And in agriculture, which is Italy’s chief industry, in spite of 
the enormous social differences, proprietor and wage laborer, the richest 
and poorest classes of Italians, come into personal contact. Social inter- 
course retains its feudal intimacy, while the industrial revolution has 
created class distinctions and a wage system which makes the Intimacy 
impossible. 

Curzio Sucket: Euro fa Vfvmte^ pp. 4.8, 51. 



CLASS STRUGGLES 


155 

RossonI and his colleagues among the practical labor organizers kept 
more of the spirit of class struggle than did the theorists. He is very 
conscious of the fact that he is still a labor leader, and regards himself 
an enemy of the socialists as to means, not as to ends. He thinks the 
orthodox class struggle to be but another Utopian theory. It is neces- 
sary, he says, to proceed pragmatically, starting with the present reality 
and making of it what we can, leaving the future to whatever may come. 
His prime effort is therefore to gain for labor whatever he can within the 
capitalist system, which must at least for the present be the starting 
point of economic reconstruction. In an early draft of the constitution 
for the Confederation he came out as follows : 

“ The Confederation maintains that the dynamic law of social history 
does not consist in the struggle between classes, that is to say between 
social functions, much less in the collaboration of classes, that is to say 
in the confusion of functions; but consists rather in the struggle of 
capacities j that is to say in the struggle of lower class groups who have 
acquired the capacity appropriate to the functions of the higher classes 
to take these functions from those higher classes, who have lost the 
capacities. 

The Confederation maintains that the specific principle of syndical- 
ism, expressed by the formula struggle of capacities ^ does not permit the 
organizations of citizens in classes or occupations to aim to undermine 
the very functions which they represent; and moreover it does not permit 
general strikes, which embrace all the classes and occupations or any of 
them in the whole national territory. 

“ The principle of struggle of capacities Implies the criterion of piece- 
meal struggles, which may eventually even resort to the strike, but only 
if this can remain localized and limited to striking a blow at those par- 
ticular groups which need to be eliminated in the interests of labor and 
of national production; otherwise the struggle, being impossible in the 
economic field, comes to be carried into the political field, as in the case 
of public service employees.” 

But even this guarded assertion by labor organizers of a modified and 
mollified class struggle proved to be too strong for their nationalist 
allies and was omitted in the constitution finally approved. For the 
nationalists emphasized the “ collaboration of classes,” what was here 
dubbed ‘‘ confusion of classes,” and expected the whole nation to be one 
huge cooperative corporation.” Whereas the practical syndicalists 
were more conscious of their internal enemies, of the so-called " para- 
sites,” Le.y of those employers who refused to ** adhere to the corpora- 
tions ” or in some other way proved to belong to that old-fashioned, un- 
productive, ‘‘unfascist” type of capitalist. The syndicalist workers 

Piglietti: SindacaUsmo fascista, p. 25, 



156 PROLETARIAN ARISTOCRACY 

even declare frankly that they do not care for large numbers of employ- 
ers^ syndicates in their organization, which is to remain predominantly 
an organ of the labor movement. They included employers’ organiza- 
tions largely for strategic and political reasons. Wherever the majority 
of employers as well as of laborers were hostile, they encouraged those 
who were friendly to organize and “ adhere to the corporations,” in order 
to break up the hostile organizations. In practice this meant that the 
fascist syndicates enlisted the fascist agrarian proprietors to help them 
against the hostile industrial groups, that is, against both the industrial 
employers and the socialist labor bosses. 

What Rossoni’s formula of '' struggle of capacities ” amounts to is 
simply that there is no struggle between classes, occupations or functions 
as such, since they are by nature interdependent, but that there is a 
struggle between men, especially between ambitious men, who form 
rival governing classes (classi dirigenti). The theory is that both in 
government and industry the old governors were worn out and that now 
a fresh, energetic class of intelligent young aristocrats ” has seized 
control and Is revolutionizing production. Accordingly the fascisti de- 
fend capitalism as an institution but attack the old-fashioned capitalists. 
Says Rossoni: We teach workers not to hate factory owners and in- 
dustrialists. But in their turn the owners must not consider themselves 
bosses in the old sense of the word. Between Italian and Italian there 
can no longer be master and slave, but only loyal co-workers for their 
common interests and for the higher ends of the country. Against the 
bosses in the old sense of the word, we shall fight inexorably.” This 
is an echo of the difficulties which the fascisti had in convincing em- 
ployers that they would be forced to take the new methods of collective 
control seriously. In many cases employers had to be literally beaten 
into recognizing the new labor organs. These recalcitrant proprietors, 
who thought all restrictions were off after the March on Rome, were the 
prime object of the militant syndicalists’ attacks. 

The fascisti regard themselves as having vanquished two parasitic 
classes: the ^destructive red” labor organizers and their monopolies, 
and the old bourgeoisie.” This old bourgeoisie ” is a technical term 
for: (a) Freemasonry, and its international clique of democratic poli- 
ticians, who, according to the fascisti, sacrificed the interests of Italy 
to their private social standing among “the brethren”; (b) the official 
class of the old Italian state in general, whom they regard as a vested in- 
ter^t of aged and infirm pedants, without energy or courage to take 
any positive steps at all and hence practically parasitic; (c) the leisure 
class of idle factory owners, absentee landlords, and In general all 

E. Rossini : Le Idee della rlcostru%ione, p. 3 1. 



PROLETARIAN ARISTOCRACY 157 

those who lived wholly on property which the labor of others made fruit- 
ful; (d) speculators, investors and managers of foreign capital or in- 
terests, manufacturers of goods which had no social value, etc. Over 
against these parasitic classes are all the good Italians ” who are 
lumped together as simply producers,” The aim of the so-called 
integralist” syndicalists was to organize all these producers into syn- 
dicates according to their occupations or categories,” to federate these 
into national corporations, or unions of the “ industrial ” type, and to 
make this whole organization, with themselves at its head, an intrinsic 
part of the fascist government. This aim, of organization by occupa- 
tions not by classes, was to be reached not by class cooperation, but by 
class action,” that is by competitive struggle, bargaining and the exact- 
ing of more favorable labor contracts. All life is struggle, they say, and 
struggle must be the means by which harmony may eventually be ob- 
tained. Not only is struggle Inevitable because of the conflicting inter- 
ests of these various groups, but within any one occupation or category 
there is and should be continual struggle of individual against 
individual. 

Syndicalist writers continually emphasize their individualism. This 
is, of course, directed primarily against the communists, for the jascisti 
frankly defend private property. But they go further than mere ob- 
jection to communistic ownership. They claim that their whole spirit 
is exactly the opposite of the orthodox socialist. Syndjcalism is ad- 
venturous, combatant, nationalistic, revolutionary, heroic. In a sense, 
of course, the syndicate is a collective unit, but it is collective in a real- 
istic sense; it exalts neither the abstract individual nor universal com- 
munism, but is based on actual common interests. Moreover the 
syndicate is not supposed to be an end in itself but merely an instru- 
ment for the education and encouragement of individuals. Just as the 
syndicalist leaders themselves have been for the most part violent, in- 
dependent, rebellious characters, so the aim of syndicalism is to organ- 
ize a proletarian elite, the new aristocracy rather than the masses. To 
be sure, even the masses of labor are to be educated, are to be taught 
to find satisfaction and self-realization in their work, not to be freed 
from It. The socialist’s emphasis on shorter hours and more leisure 
reveals the fact that he really does not want to work. The syndicalist 
on the other hand preaches the possibilities of enjoyment in work: 
jatica senza fatica — a formula which tries to convey the idea that work 
need not be tedious though it is endless and necessary. But this joy 
in work even when immediate results are not visible admittedly implies 
a certain nobility of spirit which the masses can attain only by a gradual 
process of moral discipline. For the present therefore the syndicates 



158 CITIZENS VERSUS PRODUCERS 

must concentrate on the superior individuals. The syndicates are to 
be educational institutions for the development of men of capacity and 
technical skill. From the syndicates are to come the new captains of 
industry, who will be far superior to the old, partly because they are 
schooled in the school of industry and thoroughly familiar with the 
dietailed processes of production and partly because they represent the 
native vigor and genius of the race which, according to Sorelian theory, 
the bourgeoisie had lost. The aim is to produce not merely a new class 
of industrial technicians, but genuine aristocrats, men of culture, in- 
dividuality and genuis. For the future of Italian culture is to come 
not merely from the youth, but from the proletariat, from that despised 
class which the bourgeois philistines of Europe call Italia barbara” 
The popolo d'ltalia is about to come into its own.^’’ 

, Though syndicalism is a revolt against democratic moral ideals and 
cultural standards, it regards itself as very close to Ideal political 
democracy. As a mode of political organization, syndicalism claims 
actually to be what democracy merely pretended to be. In the so- 
called democratic state the people is not really sovereign and the govern- 
ment does not really govern, for neither exercises an effective control 
over the great technical, industrial and financial interests of the nation. 
The fundamental economic government of a democratic country is in 
the hands of a few interests.” Even granted that at one time political 
parties represented specific interests, they are now becoming representa- 
tive of little more than rival groups of politicians. At best the various 
groups which are supposed to be represented by the politicians are not 
specific interests; Republicans, Radicals, Socialists, Catholics, etc. are 
becoming continually more hesitant about committing themselves clearly 
on any specific issue. In short so-called representative government is 
not representative, and the so-called choice by ballot Is not a genuine 
choice. And the reason for this is not merely the practical difficulties in 
democratic government, but the theoretic fallacy which pretends that 
citizens can be represented. Really only interests can be represented. 

Hence the French Revolution was democratic on paper only; in prac- 
tice it was a device of the bourgeoisie to gain complete control. For the 
notion of the atomic citizen which Rousseau expounded and on which 
modern democracy is based is purely fictitious. In ancient Greece and 
Rome (the French Revolution took place in a classicist atmosphere) 
such citizens really existed, for they had leisure to devote themselves to 
the res publica, while the slaves did the work. The ancient Greeks and 
Romans really could possess the virtu which Montesquieu said was 
necessary for democratic citizenship. But in modern conditions this 1$ a 

cf. Also Appendix No. 30. 



CITIZENS VERSUS PRODUCERS 


^59 

pure fiction. The reality is not some public-minded, independent citizen, 
but a producer^ caught up in a vast net-work of economic interests and 
associations. The Middle Ages with their guilds and corporations were 
much more realistic. The French Revolution merely destroyed the 
genuinely economic associations and government of the Middle Ages, 
setting up in its place under the banner of an atomic citizenship and a 
fictitious general will an economic bourgeois monopoly. Real democ- 
racy must be economic, a democratic organization of producers. The 
various particular and conflicting interests must be made explicit. Class 
cooperation is never the outcome of a supposed public opinion for the 
public interest, but is possible only if the producers can see that It Is to 
their own private interest to cooperate. Only a sydicalist organization 
of society can make this community of interests apparent, for it alone 
creates an orderly hierarchy of organized interests. 

Since society is not, as Rousseau preached, a political artifice erected 
by a political contract, but rather a primary aspect of human life with 
predominantly economic foundations, political organization must grow 
gradually out of economic association. Though the state is not based 
on an original contract, nevertheless contracts mark the essence of the 
state in the sense that they are the culmination and not the beginning 
of political organization. The natural forms of association into which 
men enter become more variegated as civilization proceeds, generating 
conflicting interests and the necessity of conciliating them. This con- 
ciliation can be accomplished only gradually and piecemeal, not by a 
grandiose Social Contract, but by specific agreements. National syndi- 
calism is the organization of various interests precisely for the purpose 
of facilitating the drawing up of collective contracts. By means of 
these contracts a strong and intelligent political order is being evolved. 

This machinery of collective conciliation and agreement which is 
characteristic of fascist syndicalism in practice is fundamental in theory 
as well. The mere organization of single interests for the sake of class 
conflict, at which the old syndicalism stopped, is not enough to create 
a state; old syndicalism was the stronghold of anarchy. Syndicates 
must be organized for purposes of conciliation and co5peration in 
order that they may promote the prosperity of the corporation ” and 
of the nation to which they belong and on which their own prosperity 
depends. The machinery of coordination (contracts, labor tribunals 
corporations, ministries, etc.) transforms the syndical organization into 
a genuine state. Not that the state is a state of syndicates, but, as 
Senator Schanzer put it, a state above syndicates.^’ Or rather in 
Panunzio^s terms, the state is the form and the syndicates the matter, 
and just as forms are Independent of any particular matter, since a given 



i6o SYI.DICAL SOCIETY, SOVEREIGN STATE 

raw mater. al may assume any number of forms, so the state must be 
strong enough to dominate and give direction to the activities of the 
syndicates. In other words, when the organized competition of private 
interests is made to serve national ends, the economic . order becomes 
also a political order. Private interests are never transcended as the 
idealists say they are, nor are national interests superimposed on them,, 
for that is impossible. The national interests are the private interests 
coordinated. In this way the syndicates, which according to Croce are 
not “moral’' institutions since they represent merely particular in- 
terests, are transformed Into factors of the “ ethical state.” The 
ethical state is not composed of compounded particulars but is an 
organic unity of processes, which processes are represented by as- 
sociations. There are no more particulars to be transcended. This idea 
is supposed to be suggested by the emphasis on production. A producer 
cannot be isolated as an individual and he does not merely pursue his own 
profit; he is a factor in a process and contributes at once to his own 
profit and to the goods of his nation. But this happy result is not 
brought about by a natural law or hidden hand ” as the economists 
believe, nor is every man by nature a producer. It is the product of a 
conscious, intelligent ordering of society. 

Hence production, and production alone, entitles a man to member- 
ship in the state and vice versa any one who contributes to the prosperity 
of the nation is a producer, “ Capital, study and work ” are thus all 
placed on the same level. The citizen is replaced by the producer and 
a man’s contribution to the productive activities of his nation is the 
measure of his worth. Fascism therefore means a revolutionary 
emphasis on production even to the extent of making this function the 
very essence of a person’s participation in the state. To quote Grandi: 
“ National syndicalism considers the individual not as a subject or a 
citizen, but as a producer, and sees the syndicates as the cells of a new 
and greater social organism, a true and genuine ‘ institutional expres- 
sion,’ destined in this manner to transform the modern and decadent 
parliamentary state.” 

A legal theory of the relation between state and syndicates has been 
worked out more fully by Sergio Panunzio (now professor in the Univer- 
sity of Rome) than by any other fascist. According to him fascism 
represents a synthesis of State and Society, Starting with the St. Simo- 
nian distinction between the organic period of history when the state 
tends to absorb all social functions, and societal periods, when the ele- 
mentary social functions break the bonds of existing state authorities, he 
sees in early syndicalism a societal process, destructive, critical, revolu- 
tionary, and in early fascism the reassertion of the state authority. With 



SYNDICAL SOCIETY, SOVEREIGN STATE i6i 

the union of fascism and syndicalism a genuine synthesis has at last been 
'achieved between two tendencies which have been opposites in the past. 
Fascism is a “ revolutionary conservation.” 

Syndicates, like all forms of association, generate their own norms of 
control, which have an inner ‘‘ institutional ” juridical validity. Law is 
not a product of the state, but of any form of association. The origins 
of law are as pluralistic as societies are. In this Panunzio follows 
Duguit and the other pluralists. The legislative power is therefore 
a power of society, Le. of any association, and not exclusively of the 
state. Hence the contracts and other labor norms which are established 
by syndicates have a legal validity quite Independently of the state. The 
essential function of the state is not legislative but judicial. The state 
is the sovereign judge. It applies the laws made by society and as such 
it is the sovereign authority for the interpretation of law. In a positivis- 
tic sense, the state may be said to make law, since a law is really a law 
only when it is applied or enforced. But strictly speaking society 
generates the laws which the state puts into operation. The so-called 
executive power of the state is really identical with its judicial function, 
since the power to judge implies the power to enforce its decisions. 
It follows that the courts should be given full power to try labor cases, 
for by so doing they give political as well as “ Institutional ” validity 
to labor contracts. 

Panunzio accordingly favored a single legally recognized monopolis- 
tic ” syndicate for each category, compulsory membership of all citizens, 
compulsory adjudication of all labor disputes by the courts and the 
prohibition of strikes and lockouts. The lower house of Parliament, be- 
ing the legislative chamber, would be syndical; the Senate remaining 
political. But these latter details of Panunzio's theory must not be 
taken as typical of the movement in general. He represents one of the 
extremes of fascist syndicalism. In general Panunzio has been criticized 
by other fascist syndicalists (<?.g. Costamagna) for recognizing the in- 
dependent juridical status of syndicates on the one hand, and on the other 
trying to evade the pluralistic implications of this doctrine by his 
doctrine of the judicial sovereignty of the state. Panunzio is evidently 
much nearer the older syndicalism than are the corporation ” theorists, 
and has recently come out flatly against corporationism.” Paradoxi- 
cally enough, though Panunzio's theory is now regarded as obsolete, 
fbeing superseded by corporationist theory, it really is closer to the pres- 
ent facts of fascist organization than the officially recognized theory is. 
Though his independent class syndicates and his '' monopolies,” etc., 
are being opposed In theory, they are being applied In fact, as we shall 
see. 



i 62 


GRUPPI DI COMPETENZA 


On the other extreme, and really quite independent of the syndicalist 
movement strictly speaking, were the gruppi di competenza, or advisory 
groups of experts. These groups had been proposed in the original 
fascist program of 1919, as we have seen in a previous chapter, and were 
modelled on Kurt Eisner’s scheme in Germany. At that time, as Mus- 
solini himself said later, “ we did not think of founding syndicate organ- 
izations.” And even in November 1921, at the founding of the 
Party, Mussolini and Massimo Rocca still represented this point of 
view. Several months before the March on Rome, largely through the 
efforts of Rocca and Giovanni Preziosi, a Neapolitan nationalist, four 
of these groups were formed: of administration, of schools, of colonies, 
and of literary affairs. In addition to these national groups, there were 
also provincial groups attached to the provincial federations and sections 
of the Fascist Party. They were composed of men within and without 
the Fascist Party, and began as independent non-political boards of 
experts, who themselves initiated specific technical reforms or else 
advised the government when consulted. In November 1923 Rocca in- 
duced the Grand Council to transform his organization into the Segre- 
tario Generate dei Consigli Tecnici Nazionali, to give it official recog- 
nition and to make it a sort of go-between between the syndicates and the 
party, It being Independent of both. In practice, these technical councils 
really accomplished very little. The one on schools, when it proved to 
be hostile to Senator Gentile’s reform, was abolished. Both politicians 
and syndicalists resented their interference with the more regular ” 
machinery. And when Rocca was caught in the dissidence movement, 
was expelled and forced to flee the country, his organization naturally 
collapsed. But though these groups amounted to little in themselves 
they paved the way both in theory and practice for more extensive 
reforms. Rocca himself wanted to make them the basis of a legislative 
reform, and this idea was championed by others. Govi and other 
right wing fascists, who were particularly hostile to Parliament, wanted 
to make them the legislative organs of the government. Govi called 
his theory of the technical state epistemarchia, or the rule of science. 
The idea was that since parliaments today merely approve laws (most 
of them highly technical) which they do not make, but which are drafted 
by committees in consultation with experts, it would make legislation 
more efficient and intelligent to turn over the whole legislative power 
to these groups of experts. Acerbo proposed that they be embodied in 
the Senate and that the Chamber merely act as a check on this new 
Senate, which would become the real legislative body, thus reversing 
the functions of the two houses. Others proposed an independent third 
V. T. Nanni: Bolsc&vismo e FascismOy p. 277. 



OTHER GROUPS 163 

Chamber. The Reform Commission of 1925 proposed that the technical 
councils be embodied in the present Chamber of Deputies. It was 
generally agreed among syndicalistic fascists that the provincial gruppi 
di competenza would assume judicial functions and act as labor tribunals 
along with the collegi dei probiviri, PIghetti and some of the more 
aristocratic syndicalists urged that they be attached to the ministries, so 
that each ministry would have its economic council. If incorporated In 
this way Into the government, they might afford, he thought, a practical 
means for establishing the much heralded corporations/’ those central 
coordinating agencies between labor, employers and government, which 
Rossoni’s corporations failed to be. As it turned out, of course, noth- 
ing had to be done about them in practice, since they died a quiet death; 
nevertheless the theories and projects to which they gave birth are still 
living and help to swell the movement for the establishment of the corpo- 
rate state and economic representation. 

We might mention at this place several organizations which are closely 
associated with fascist syndicalism, but which have played minor roles in 
practice and have contributed no new social theories. 

The Cooperatives, though of course not fascist institutions either 
in origin or idea, Jiave been incorporated into fascist syndicalism. 
Shortly after the accession of the fascisti to power a large number of 
cooperative organizations, especially the rural ones, banded together 
and formed the Sindacato Italiano Cooperativo, under the leadership of 
Gaetano Postiglione and E. Civelli. This organization tried to bring 
order out of the chaos into which the cooperatives had fallen as a 
result of the breaking up of the political parties to which they had been 
allied, and also in many cases as a result of squadrist ravages. The 
rural cooperative banks were in an especially serious condition. Under 
the motto of freeing the cooperatives from politics ” and putting them 
on a solid economic basis, the above fascist leaders gradually got control 
of the great majority of cooperatives. They were fairly successful in 
warding off the hungry politicians, fascist and otherwise, who were rum- 
maging the land for loose funds; in fact, it was precisely the danger from 
these marauders, who fell upon unprotected codperatives, which drove 
many of them into Postiglione’s camp. In 1925 after the passage of 
the syndical law and after Bottai, who had been president of the 
National Federation of Producers’ Cooperatives, became Undersecre- 
tary of Corporations, non-fascist organizations were abolished and the 
organization was transformed into the Ente Nazionde della Coopera^ 
zioTie and affiliated In part with Rossoni’s Confederation, In part (the 
Cooperatives of Industrial Production) with the Confederation of In- 
dustry, and in part with the Confederation of Commerce. The national 



OTHER GROUPS 


164 

organization is divided according to the various kinds of cooperatives, 
into five national federations, and each of these has its provincial federa- 
tion. There are about 1,800 consumers’ Cooperatives, 1,100 labor and 
producers’ Cooperatives, 300 agricultural Cooperatives {i,e. “ collective 
renters”), 350 Cooperative Rural Banks, 180 Cooperatives for the 
building of homes. Altogether they have about 400,000 members, 
Rossoni is at present attempting to get the whole organization into his 
confederation, on the ground that all cooperatives, of whatever kind, are 
agencies of wage control, and wage control ought to be in the hands of 
the labor organization; but his chances are slight. 

A more characteristically fascist institution was the Commissariati 
delle opere. A committee of the fascio of Cesena, under the direction of 
Amedeo Mazzotti, undertook to deal with the unemployment problem. 
It called together representatives of the public administrations, of banks, 
merchants associations, industrialists, agriculturalists, workers syndi- 
cates, cooperatives, etc., to discover some means of securing additional 
employment In that province. It was discovered that a number of profit- 
able enterprises might be undertaken if capital could be found. Accord- 
ingly this committee of commissaries named commissions of experts to 
take charge of the enterprises, while the above-named institutions cooper- 
ated in furnishing the capital, and thus became the joint owners of the 
enterprises. The success of this experiment led to its adoption else- 
where. Soon Mazzotti was able to establish various provincial organi- 
zations and finally also the National Commissariat of Works {commis- 
sariato nazionale delle opere), whose director he became. Thus it 
became a combination national employment bureau and promoter of 
cooperative enterprises. However, within a year of its nationalization 
the whole movement collapsed, and its functions were taken over by the 
syndicalist organizations. 

A very important organization is the Ufficio Centrale (now Ente 
Morale) Dopo-lavoro. This organization started In private factories, 
like the great Fiat works, for instance, who organized recreation centers, 
sports and entertainments for their employees. It soon became a 
national federation devoted to “ the encouragement, through the initia- 
tive of the employers concerned, of measures for the sanitary, domestic, 
physical, cultural, and professional Improvement of their employees.” 
Until April 1927 the Duke of Aosta was at the head of the organization, 
when he resigned on account of other duties and Turati, Secretary of 
the Fascist Party, took his place. It is directly affiliated with the Con- 
federation of Fascist Syndicates, and according to the new law, a per- 
centage of the fees levied by the syndicates goes to Its support, as well 
as to the support of other national philanthropic institutions {enti 
morali). 



TOWARDS SYNDICATE MONOPOLY 165 


IIL The Crisis 

Fascism and syndicalism were much more readily identified in theory 
than in practice, and the March on Rome, which was supposed to be the 
final victory for national syndicalism as well as for fascism, really proved 
to be the beginning of its hardest battle. For since then it has been com- 
pelled to fight not other labor organizations but other fascisti. 

The labor organizations of the other parties had slight chances of 
offering serious resistance to Rossoni’s fascist corporations, after these 
had achieved the prestige of His Majesty’s official syndicates. There was 
an attempt immediately after the March on Rome to unite all Italian 
labor into a single solid patriotic organization to be headed by d’An- 
nunzio, but this was promptly suppressed. 

Labor leaders of all parties began to get on the fascist band-wagon, 
just as other politicians did. And Rossoni immediately gave them em- 
ployment. They were sent all over the country to carry on the ac- 
customed “ syndical action.” They continued to appeal to the proletariat 
against the exploiting bourgeoisie with all the demagogy they had been 
accustomed to practice before their conversion to fascism. In some 
factories and to a greater extent in the country, they forced surplus 
labor on the owners, precisely as the socialist monopolies had done before. 
Here and there strikes were declared, supplemented on occasion by the 
club of squadrists. In Romagna and Emilia local fascist bosses, like 
Farinacci, who were favorable to the syndicates, forced employers 
who exploited the new patriotic discipline of the workers for their 
selfish interests ” to submit to the fascist syndicates. The success of 
these activities was due In part to the desperate belief among laborers 
that their only refuge lay in these syndicates and in part to the system 
Instituted whereby labor organizers were paid by the number of mem- 
bership cards they were able to sell. 

The Catholic Popularist Syndicates were the most delicate problem, 
since their party was a member of the government coalition at the time. 
But partly under the guise of fusion ” and partly by Intimidation, the 
fascisti undermined the northern popularist organizations completely, 
and the southern they at least robbed of their power of opposition. 
They were facilitated in this because they already had control of the 
agricultural proprietors’ associations and through these could exercise 
considerable pressure on the peasants. 

More subtle methods were used against the socialists. In August 
1923, following upon some suggestions of Mussolini that an independent, 
non-political labor organization might be encouraged, the congress of 
socialistic syndicates under d’Aragona renounced their adherence to the 



i66 THE PARTY AND CORPORATIONS 

Socialist Party, in the hope that Rossoni’s organization ■ would free 
itself from the Fascist Party. But this merely played into Rossoni’s 
hands, whose corporations took over bodily many of the socialistic 

syndicates. 

Rossoni had also gotten control of the railroad workers and other 
important groups, and though the industrial employers were more hostile 
to his mixed syndicates than were the agriculturalists, even several 
employers’ associations adhered to the corporations. In short, it soon 
began to seem as though the fascist corporations would achieve their 
aim, would organize all classes of the nation Into a single great labor 
monopoly. In June 1922 they had numbered only 470,000 (277,084 
agricultural laborers and proprietors, and only 72,000 industrial work- 
ers); in August they reached 800,000; in June 1923, 1,500,000, and in 
June 1924 about 1,800,000. And in 1925 even the communists ad- 
mitted that the non-fascist syndicates had lost over three million 
members of the fascist^ 

The success of the corporations split the fascist politicians into t'wo 
groups: one group, which included most of the petty politicians and 
opportunists, objected to syndicate autonomy and wanted the fascist 
party to take over the syndicates and embody them Into the political 
machinery of the bureaucracy. The other group, the right wing and 
liberals, resented syndicate monopoly as a revival of class antagonism and 
demagogy. 

Originally practically all the active syndicalists were opposed to em- 
bodying the syndicalist organization into the political machinery of the 
party. For though they were more than willing to be closely affiliated 
with the government and to have an ofHcial position within the fascist 
movement, they insisted on autonomy, when it came to party politics. 
The reasons for this were partly personal jealousy, the syndicalist hier- 
archy being unwilling to subordinate itself to the political hierarchy of 
the party, partly a well-grounded suspicion that the majority of squad- 
rists and the early crop of fascist politicians were quite ignorant of 
syndicalist affairs, and some of them even openly hostile. When the 
intimate alliance between national syndicalism and facism became evi- 
dent, and syndicalism became well established fascist office seekers 
poured into the syndicalist ranks by the score, and threatened to cor- 
rupt completely an organization which was none too pure to begin with. 
The syndicalists were apparently flattered at first by their sudden 
popularity, and opened their door cordially. But they soon realized 
their mistake and an open clash arose between the party leaders and the 
syndicalists. The party leaders wanted only registered members of the 
Fascist Party to be admitted into the syndicates (which would have 



DE STEFANI^S LIBERALISM 167 

reduced the syndicate membership enormously). The syndicalists as- 
serted that joining a fascist syndicate was tantamount to becoming a 
fascist and that therefore membership in the Party itself was to be 
optional. The Party leaders urged that the syndicates become ad- 
ministrative organs of the government; the syndicalists urged that they 
could operate more effectively if left autonomous. 

The issue then became submerged in the more general one between 
the intransigents ” and the revisionists.’’ This circumstance helped 
to reconcile party and syndicates to each other, for the more prominent 
dissidents and revisionists belonged to the second group mentioned 
above, that is, the right wing liberals. But what worried the syndical- 
ists even more than the dissident liberals were the liberals entrenched 
in the government. In the face of this more serious enemy, the syndical- 
ists made their peace with the Party. The syndicalist leader, Pighetti, 
for example, wrote in 1924: To be sure, while admitting the greatest 
orthodoxy and best relations with the Party, practical and theoretical 
necessities demand that syndlcal organization should not be suffocated 
by the meddling and vigilance of the Party itself. This suffocation 
can not be said to exist today and certainly syndical organization is 
aware of the danger and Is adopting measures of defense against it. 
It has to deal with the characters of men rather than written agree- 
ments, which may not be perfect either. So also It is engaged in de- 
fending itself against the other and greater danger of false fascisti 
(and among the false fascisti are those who do not take the facts of 
syndicalism into account, though it is one of the most vital sources of 
fascism), who are working against our syndicalism in all possible ways. 
This danger, I repeat, is much more serious than the other; and it is to 
be hoped that among all the purifications, about which there is so much 
talk, those will not be forgotten, by which we shall finally be rid of the 
anti-syndicalists.” 

When Mussolini took office, it may be remembered from our previous 
chapters, he had an over-simplified theory of internal government. 
Internally the state was to be little more than the old-fashioned liberal- 
istic policeman. If Mussolini was converted to this point of view by 
reasons of practical and temporary expediency, his first Minister of 
Finances, Alberto De Stefani, was convinced of it by principle. He 
was an orthodox individualistic economist, and what is more, a profes- 
sor of political economy. Hence he set to work not as a practical 
politician, but as a scientist bent on carrying out his theories in full 
Shortly after he took office, Tamorra, the Popularist Minister of the 
Treasury, died, which enabled him to take over that ministry too, and 

Pighetti : Smdaadismo Fascista^ p. 1 9- 



i68 


DE STEFANTS LIBERALISM 

having been granted extraordinary powers by Parliament, he was 
thus given ample scope and authority. 

The Ministry of Labor was abolished. Telephones were turned over 
to private companies, and telegraphs, railroads, and post offices would 
have been also, had they been paying concerns. Most of the socialist 
land legislation was repealed. Government protection and subsidies for 
cooperatives were withdrawn. Instead of undertaking extensive public 
works, he turned the available funds over to private concerns, especially 
for the big agricultural developments in the south. The inheritance 
tax was abolished. And of the thirteen direct taxes only three were 
retained, those on land, buildings and income. The income tax was 
extended to the salaried class and to small farmers and was made very 
heavy. The railroad personnel was reduced and rates were raised. 
Indirect taxes were instituted wherever possible. 

In order to offset this burden and to reduce the cost of living, the 
protective tariff was taken off of flour and was lowered on sugar and 
other agricultural products. But ^^the national interests” made it 
impossible for De Stefani to proceed to a reduction of industrial tariffs, 
much as he should have liked to on theoretical grounds ! In short, his 
conscious aim and policy was: (a) to reduce the state’s budget by 
reducing its functions; (b) to stimulate saving and the accumulation and 
circulation of capital; (c) to encourage rigid economy in all branches 
of the government. He announced that he was making no revolution in 
finance, but merely “consistent, scientific, technical economies.” 

His chief success was naturally in the matter of stabilizing finances. 
He succeeded In balancing the budget, reducing the debt and reducing 
the circulation of paper. His chief backing, however, came not from 
the banks who were still a bit skeptical of fascism, but from the in- 
dustrialists, to whom a new era of laissez faire was a veritable God- 
send. The practical success of his measures increased the general 
confidence of the business classes in his administration. In addition, he 
had the good fortune to be opposed by the villains of the hour, Rossi 
and Rocca, though for opposite reasons. Hence he was allowed to re- 
main entrenched during the crisis of 1924. 

De Stefani’s financial policy was, of course, not directly opposed 
to the syndicalists. They too were individualists in a way. Certainly 
Rossoni did not object to the .abandonment of state ownership and 
management of business enterprises, for all private business was his 
prospective prey. But indirectly De Stefani’s policy was ruinous for 
Rossoni, since it gave renewed power and prestige to the industrialists. 
It became increasingly difficult for him to justify the fascist govern- 
ment to his labor constituency and it became practically impossible for 



THE RIGHT WING 


169 

Mm to make headway against the employers^ who were using De 
Stefani’s liberalism as an excuse for disregarding their labor contracts 
and refusing to deal with labor organizations of any kind. 

Worst of all, De Stefani was openly opposed to any form of syndicate 
monopoly, and was evidently anxious to keep syndicalism within harm- 
less bounds. Just a few days before the March on Rome he had written 
as follows: “The Fascist Party and the national syndicates are two 
distinct organizations, the first of which controls the second, in order 
that syndical activity may develop within the limits of the national and 
productivistic principle. The political organs of the Party must see to it 
that the national principle be respected and must employ the work of 
the gruppi di competenza to control the economic action of the syndicates. 
We must have the strength to go against the national syndicates when 
they do not respect the conditions which we have laid down for liberty 
of organization, just as we went against the red and white syndicates. 
. . . Syndicalism is a mode of procedure for capitalists as well as for 
laborers, a means for reaching certain conditions of equilibrium which 
could not be achieved without organization. ... I should also like 
to know what the directors of the Party think on the question of unity 
or plurality of syndicates. I do not believe a forced cultivation of 
syndical unity to be opportune. . . . We must allow all those organi- 
zations to live that obey national principles. Unity favors capitalistic 
parasitism and also workers’ parasitism. The economic situation of the 
nation does not permit parasitism.” 

This was a clear threat of opposition to RossonI’s tactics. 

Similar opposition kept pouring in upon fascist syndicalism from the 
right wing of the Party In general, and the internal dualism of fascism 
was becoming perfectly evident. The “ ideal revolt,” as several writers 
put it, “was turning into a ^bourgeois reaction^”; and the left wing 
was apparently powerless to stop it. 

Among the nationalists as well as the liberals there was opposition to 
syndicalism — opposition on principle. Volt, for example, in his 
Programma della destra jascista, wrote: “To erect, at the foundations 
of the state and as the sources of its sovereignty, bodies of a technical- 
adihinistrative nature would give a new and powerful impulse to the 
current mania for regulating, organizing, fettering. In short of laying 
hands on that field in which the state should meddle least, the field 
of national economy. A disastrous tendency, which commonly bears 
the name of state socialism. The conception of the syndical state 
leads to analogous consequences- This conception, developed recently 
by Pahunzio, is bound up with the theory of national fascist syndicalism. 

De Stefani: Discord^ p. iSi-2. See also Appendix No. 14. 



jyo the agriculturalists balk 

But this national syndicalism is an equivocation. Pure syndicalism, 
as it was conceived by Sorel, is bolshevism. Nationalism excludes 
syndicalism, for the nation is something much greater and higher and 
more complex than syndicates. Fascism, when it transferred to the 
nation that ideal and bellicose fervor with which socialism pretended 
to permeate the class war, retained the syndicates as technical bodies 
to be sure, but killed syndicalism as a doctrine. ... By this we do 
not mean to deny any and every political function to the syndicates. 
We deny only that syndical representation can serve as a basis for the 
modern state/^ 

Some of the revisionists said the same thing. And as for the Old 
Guard, the squadrists, many of them were violently opposed to any 
form of labor movement. 

More serious opposition came from more practical men of affairs. 
The agriculturalists had been Rossoni’s mainstay throughout the fight 
on the red leagues. But now when they saw the same old methods 
creeping in under a different color they became suspicious. They still 
had a violent repugnance for any form of farming out labor on them 
(impostazione di mano d' opera) ^ and yet that is precisely what Ros- 
soni’s syndicates were resorting to in many regions, in order to combat 
unemployment. And in some regions the provincial ras were regulat- 
ing wages and prices in agriculture, just as formerly the red leagues had 
done.^^ In short it looked as though the fascist Integral corporations 
were going to turn out to be nothing but labor monopolies under another 
name. Against this the agrarians tried to revolt, and for a while in 
1923 there was an open conflict between the Confederation of Agriculture 
and the fascist syndicalists, ending in RossonI’s forcing the Confedera- 
tion to adhere ” to his corporations. Then individual agrarian leaders 
revolted. Captain Form attacked the syndicates as a whole, whereupon 
he was forced out of the Party. Similarly Ottavio Corgini, Under- 
secretary of Agriculture, set himself against the integral or monopolistic 
syndicalism of the RossonI group and at a meeting of the Grand Council 
spoke his thoughts with the greatest frankness. Even before the March 
on Rome, he and Rocca had outlined a program for economic reconstruc- 
tion which was based on liberalistic economics and which had been sup- 
pressed by the propaganda office of the Party Later he ordered an 
inquiry into the operations of a certain big industrial corporation to 
which the drainage of the Pontine marshes had been conceded. This 

Volt: Pro gramma della destra fasdsfa^ p. 115. 

^ cf, e,g. Farinacci : Un feriodo aureo del Partito Naziomle Fascista^ p. 344. See 
also Appendix No, 20, 

V. Volt: Programma della destra fascista^ p. 81. 



INDUSTRIALIST OPPOSITION 


171 

incurred the hostility of a powerful industrial group and of a clique 
of politicians against him, and when his public approval of Misuri^s 
famous speech of protest afforded a pretext, he was expelled from the 
Party, July 27, 1923. His successor, A. Serpieri, though he reached an 
understanding with Rossoni on the basis of corporations and class co- 
operation, continued the policy of opposition to syndical monopoly. 
He wrote: We cannot agree to the extreme syndicalist doctrine which 
is the tendency at present and which tends to coincide in the economic 
field with state socialism, killing private initiative, undermining free 
activity by state decisions and judgments in economic affairs. The 
doctrine, according to the experience of the whole of history, would 
eventually, if adhered to, lead to a general diminution of wealth to the 
disadvantage of all; a result all the more serious in a poor country like 
Italy. The agrarian politics of the fascist government in its early 
phases was squarely headed in the direction of a recognition of this 
truth, . . . The national government was firmly bent on allowing the 
emergence of the clean and efficient machinery of private production 
based on free individual initiative which, notwithstanding all the ac- 
cusations of injustice and imperfection hurled against It, had once more 
proved itself, in the light of experience to be better than governmental 
or semi-governmental enterprises and all the “ rational ” regulation 
and equitable ” distribution imposed by public authorities. ... To 
return, though in a different form, by way of a national syndicalism in 
the sense now given it, to a kind of state socialism or paternalism, to a 
bureaucratic and even warlike conception of economic life, would be, in 
my judgment, a grave error.’’ 

While such views were being expressed by agriculturalists the in- 
dustrialists had also let their attitude be known. The Confederation of 
Industry, which represented industrial employers and which had quietly 
become the General Fascist Confederation of Industry, proved even 
more unbending towards the Rossoni corporations than was the Con- 
federation of Agriculture. There is a curious paradox in the relations 
between Rossoni’s corporations to the agriculturalists on the one hand 
and to the industrialists on the other. Many agriculturalists welcomed 
mixed syndicates and the industrialists solidly opposed them, but both 
attitudes had the same motive, namely, the fear of labor monopolies. 
The explanation is that in agriculture the mixed corporations were al- 
ready an effective check on agrarian class domination and seemed to be 
the only alternative to extreme syndicalism which would have re- 
established labor monopolies; while in industry, class cooperation and 
mixed associations were unknown and impracticable and were regarded 
^ A. Serpieri: La FoUtica Jgraria in Italia, pp. 215-216. See also pp. 214-226. 



172 MUSSOLINI’S COMPROMISE 

by industrialists as a mere phrase on the part of labor leaders by which 
they tried to conceal their ambition, and as in reality a menace to the 
independence of employers’ organizations. Hence they preferred to 
deal with organized labor frankly as an enemy instead of welcoming 
the Trojan horse, the mixed corporations. Accordingly the Confedera- 
tion of Industry had refused all ov'ertures and had successfully resisted 
Rossoni’s attempts to win over the important industrial associations. 

Finally on December 20, 1923, Mussolini called the heads of the rival 
organizations to a meeting in the Chigi Palace, Rome. He presented a 
resolution asking the two Confederations in the interests of industrial 
peace and of promoting more cordial relations between employers and 
employees and their organizations, (i) to cooperate in organizing, the 
one the employers, and the other the employees; (2) to name a perma- 
nent commission of ten, five from each Confederation, for the purpose of 
coordinating the activities of the two organizations and resolving any 
disputes arising between them. After a reply by Benni in behalf of the 
Confederation of Industry and several observations ” by Rossoni in 
behalf of the Confederation of Syndicate Corporations, the resolution 
was adopted. Mussolini took this opportunity to say very frankly. 

Rossoni will not be grieved when he sees that the attempt to carry 
integral syndicalism into the industrial field has not succeeded. More- 
over Rossoni has understood perfectly from his very fiirst defeats that 
what can be done in the field of agriculture, which has its own special 
economy, can not be done in the field of industry.” On February 21, 
1924, a similar agreement was made for the rival agricultural confedera- 
tions (except that the agricultural confederation was willing to con- 
tinue to adhere to the Corporations) and on the same day also for those 
of commerce. At this last meeting it was hinted that the economic 
councils of experts would be given a corporate organization and attached 
permanently to the government. 

Whether Rossoni was grieved or not at these developments, they 
seemingly marked the definite failure of his deep-laid plans. 

Mussolini apparently regarded these agreements between capital and 
labor as a settlement. Not so Rossoni; he did not surrender so easily. 
There had been fascist strikes all through 1923. Farinacci had led 
several demonstrations in his province, notably a strike against the at- 
tempt to turn over the railroads to a private concern. And Rossoni 
had successfully repelled the attacks of the agriculturalists. The signals 
for a renewal of the fight were given in October. At that time the corpo- 
rations held their Annual Convention in Turin, the labor stronghold, and 
it proved to be a genuine stormy labor congress. The cry was raised 
V* Benito Mussolini: La Nuova PoUtica delP Italia, VoL II, p. i37"8. 



LABOR RETALIATES 173 

with a loud voice that there were traitors in the party and that the 
employers were trying to undermine fascism. It unanimously accused 
them of giving vent to their disappointment at discovering that fascism 
did not intend to betray the workers to the dictatorship of their em- 
ployers, by trying to detach Mussolini from fascism and to disrupt the 
regime. Accordingly it declared that fascism would be compelled to 
remind the employers in their turn of its glorious origins by resorting 
to force. 

In the face of such sentiment the compromises which Mussolini effected 
in December were evidently to be regarded as but a temporary truce. 
Rossoni was busy strengthening his position in the Party. He created 
no further difficulties for the government and even made himself very 
useful during the spring election campaign In swinging the labor vote. 
But after the elections he was ready for a different kind of action. 

Circumstances favored him, for the MatteottI crisis created an atmos- 
phere in which the stand taken by his labor organizations might settle 
the fate of the regime. Mussolini was quick to sense this, and was glad 
of any opportunity to make fascism appear before masses in a more 
favorable light. With Mussolini the whole intelligentsia of the party, 
the young aristocrats ” took a decided swing to the left. Rocco and 
Grandi, syndicalistic nationalists, were called to important posts in 
the cabinet* Panunzio, the most syndicalist of the fascist syndicalists, 
was put on the National Directorate of the Party. In July Mussolini 
himself accused the industrialists of granting enormous loans to the 
government out of their profits, at the same time refusing to raise the 
wages of their employees ; and he even hinted at exorbitant war profits. 

Meanwhile the lira began falling and prices began rising. This 
naturally fanned labor sentiment. The fascist syndicates now under- 
took a series of strikes: August 1924 at Savona, a strike of railroad 
workers; serious strikes were narrowly averted in the textile industries 
of Prato by the yielding of the employers; at Turin the fascist syndicates 
even cooperated with the socialists against the metal industries; in 
August the Grand Council of Rome decided In favor of the strikers 
at Valdarno, granting them a subsidy of 50,000 lire to carry on their 
strike; in September at Trieste, fascists forced the workers to declare 
a strike of protest at the dismissal of several fascist workmen; at Car- 
rara in the marble works 30,000 men struck under fascist leadership; 
and in the spring of 1925 at Brescia and then spreading throughout 
Lombardy 100,000 workers struck and forced an agreement from the 
metal industry. In these later strikes Farinacci, then Secretary General 
of the Party, and his squadrists took a personal hand. Farinacci also 
repeatedly attacked the banks as unscrupulous manipulators of the 



THE REFORM COMMISSION 


^74 

national credit.^® April twenty-first, the anniversary of the founding of 
Rome, was made a labor holiday, thus anticipating May first, which 
would otherwise certainly have been a holiday. 

In the midst of all this De Stefani committed a blunder. In the 
spring of 1925 there was apparently a conspiracy in the stock exchange 
to force the lira down still more. Hereupon De Stefani, exasperated to 
the point of abandoning his laissez faire theory, placed severe restrictions 
on stock brokers and threatened still more drastic actions. The banks 
launched a vigorous protest and forced the government immediately to 
define Its policy. Mussolini had to step in. He rescinded the De Stefani 
restrictions and promised to keep hands off the sacred banks. Whether 
this incident was the cause or the pretext of De Stefani’s resignation is 
hard to tell. To the banks it meant a victory for laissez faire; but to 
labor it symbolized the failure of the bourgeois reaction. For in De 
Stefani the industrialists lost their staunchest friend. Rossoni was much 
relieved. 

The net result of the whole campaign was that in the fall of 1925 the 
fascist corporations found themselves in a much more favorable position 
than they had been a year previously. External circumstances had fa- 
vored them, to be sure, but in addition their vigorous resumption of class 
war had demonstrated to the employers that the fighting spirit was still 
alive even among fascist labor leaders. Rossoni had strengthened his 
grip on Italian labor enormously. The industrial, socialistic workers 
began to have a little more respect for him, and the white or Catholic 
syndicates lost practically all their power, their membership flocking 
into the fascist organizations. But above all he had forced the fascisti 
themselves to take syndicalism more seriously and to feel the power 
which the syndicates could wield, for or against the regime. 


IF. Reform 

In the last chapter we have already described the political conditions 
by which Mussolini was induced to appoint the Commission of Solons ” 
in August 1924, The economic crisis, which we have just described, 
made the proposal for constitutional reform all the more urgent. Under 
these conditions, the Commission found it more or less futile to discuss 
strictly parliamentary reforms and instead it devoted most of its at- 
tention to the sixth and last problem which Mussolini had assigned it, 
namely, the relation between state and syndicates, with the three sub- 
topics, (a) the state and national economy; (b) legal recognition of 

cf. Farinacci: TJn feriodo aureo del Partita Nazioncde Fascista^ p. 31. See 
Appendix No. 20. 



THE REFORM COMMISSION 175 

syndicates; (c) a body of labor laws and principles for regulating and 
enforcing labor contracts in industry and the creation of arbitration 
tribunals. The syndicalist members of the Commission, among whom 
was Rossoni himself, now took a leading part. They became conscious 
of the fact that they were designing a new state. The second and greater 
part of their final report of July 1925 is accordingly a comprehensive 
analysis of what they called the Corporate State.-^ It recommends the 
legal recognition of syndicates, and a system of Corporate Chambers to 
take the place of the provincial chambers of commerce, labor and agricul- 
ture, abolished by the fascist revolution. These Chambers were to be 
constituted as follows : the nation to be divided into three orders ’’ : 
(i) professional men, artisans and public employees, (2) agriculture 
and agricultural industry, (3) industry, commerce, proprietors of build- 
ings and movable property. The members of the various syndicates in 
each order were to elect representatives to a Provincial Chamber. Each 
of the three Provincial Chambers to have a council and an assembly. 
The three Chambers taken together would constitute the Provincial 
Corporate College. Each Provincial College would have its council 
and assembly. The Provincial Colleges were to elect their representa- 
tives to the National Corporate Council, which would elect its own 
president. This Council was to be divided into three Committees, cor- 
responding to the three orders. These bodies, both provincial and 
national, would have complete charge of the administration of economic 
affairs, the judging of labor disputes, recommending appropriate meas- 
ures to the government, etc. The government would have the right 
to interfere at any point of this organization, but if it dissolved any cor- 
porate body, a new one would have to be constituted within six months. 
It was suggested that the National Corporate Council might form a third 
Chamber of Parliament, but the majority of the Commission favored a 
scheme whereby one half of the deputies would be elected by the 
Provincial Corporate Colleges, to sit with the other half elected as at 
present. The Senate was to remain unchanged. 

Such In bare outline was the New Order proposed by the Commission 
of Eighteen. But there were differences of opinion even within the 
Commission. Some of the liberals had certain general objections to the 
scheme as a whole, which they formulated as follows: The system forces 
the citizen into the narrow confines of his separate economic interests 
or categories and thus makes impossible any consideration of the general 
national welfare. The ideal unity and historical continuity of the state 
is sacrificed to a hierarchy of private interests. The so-called reform 
is but a " sentimental reaction ” toward old-fashioned democracy, except 

^ See App^dix No. 22. 



176 THE REFORM COMMISSION 

that it robs the sovereign of some of his political functions, and retains 
some of the “ socialistic superstitions ” according to which the citizen 
is merely an economic producer. 

Then there were some extreme nationalistic syndicalists who preferred 
compulsory membership in a single syndicate for each trade. This 
would make the syndicates direct governmental organs. Instead of 
labor contracts, there would be administrative labor decrees and arbi- 
tration/’ and strikes would be crimes prohibited by law. On the other 
hand, some Sorelian individualistic syndicalists objected to the corpora- 
tions as subjecting the syndicates, which ought to remain spontaneous 
and free for “economic action,” too much to governmental control. 
Pighetti, one of the experts consulted by the Commission, welcomed 
the corporations, but preferred a larger number, afhliated each with one 
of the Ministries of the government, and acting as advisory bodies, thus 
carrying on the work of the gruppi di competenza. He wanted to put 
them more directly under the power of the ministers, substituting for 
elections by the syndicates an outright appointment of one third of the 
councillors by the ministry and a selection of the other two thirds by 
the ministry from a list prepared by the National Corporate Council as 
a whole. In general he emphasized the need of “ disciplining the 
masses ” by state-controlled organizations, while the Commission (espe- 
cially its secretary, Costamagna) emphasized the reform of representa- 
tion and democratic control Angelo O. Olivetti, however, emphasized, 
even more than the general report of the Commission did, the rights 
of the syndicates to adequate representation. He attempted a more de- 
tailed definition of the respective functions of syndicates and corpora- 
tions, assigning to the syndicates all technical regulation of conditions of 
labor in any single field, and reserving for the corporations all political 
functions, Le, those of adjustment, judicial decision, legal recognition of 
contracts, etc. He was careful to keep all political matters out of the 
hands of the syndicates, on the ground that it was very important “ to 
prevent the politics of the politician, which is today penetrating and 
poisoning the whole life of the syndicates, from penetrating also the 
corporations to make them a matter of political speculation.” For this 
same reason he and others welcomed the Commission’s proposal of 
provincial, in place of the traditional municipal chambers of labor 
established by the socialists. 

The reader will observe that this program is dominated by the ideas of 
integral” syndicalism and its Corporations. In fact, though there 
were a number of syndicalists on the Commission, to say nothing of 
Rossoni himself, the industrialists^ and employers’ organizations had no 
direct representatives at all. 

The report immediately caused much excitement. The Confederation 



PACT OF THE VIDONI PALACE 


177 

of Industry let it be known that serious modifications were necessary; 
the corporations would have to be de-integralized and the syndicates 
could not be mixed/’ Rossoni was reminded that he had been told 
once before that he and his confederations would not be allowed to have 
a monopoly over the political organization of Italian economic life. 
And before Parliament had a chance to take up the reform^ the Con- 
federation of Industry forced a compromise. 

On October 2, 1925, Farinacci, as Secretary General of the Party, 
called the heads of the rival confederations together and an agreement 
was concluded known as The Pact of the Vidoni Palace, which laid the 
practical foundation for recent labor legislation. In this pact the two 
confederations not only recognized each other as the official and ex- 
clusive representatives, the one of labor, the other of the industrialists, — 
a recognition which they had already made two years before, — but 
went on to stipulate that All contracts between Industrialists and labor 
leaders must be made between dependent organizations of the Con- 
federation of Industry and those dependent on the Confederation of 
Corporations. Consequently, internal commissions in the factories 
are abolished and their functions devolve upon the local syndicates, 
which will exercise them only in connection with the correspondent 
industrial organizations/’ A few weeks later this agreement was legal- 
ized by Royal Decree, thus giving legal recognition to collective labor 
contracts even before the syndicates themselves were recognized. 

Though superficially this pact may seem to be little more than a 
confirmation of the agreement of two years previously, since it confirms 
the supremacy of the Confederation of Industry for employers and of 
the Confederation of Corporations for labor, it marked a considerable 
gain for Rossoni. The provisions against factory commissions were in 
his favor; for though these commissions were a hang-over from the 
factory occupation movement of 1920 and were supposed to defend 
labor interests, they had really become pliant instruments in the hands 
of the employers, especially now that the fascist regime had undermined 
the old labor organizations with whom the commissions had been affili- 
ated. In their place came the collective contracts negotiated by the 
national rival confederations and such contracts were not only compul- 
sory but were given legal recognition. 

The recognition of collective contracts furthermore marked the be- 
ginning of the breakdown of individualism, for it was but a small step 
from the regulation of labor conditions by the national syndicate con- 
federations of the fascist party, to an outright government control. It 
was in this spirit that Rossoni accepted the Pact of the Vidoni Palace. 
For him it was not a settlement, but like the earlier pact one more step 
in his fight for a corporate state. 



lyS THE NEW CONSTITUTION 

Meanwhile the Commission's Report had been taken up by the Grand 
Council of the Fascist Party and the draft of a bill was sent to the 
Committee of the Chamber of Deputies which submitted it to Parlia- 
ment. It is commonly believed that the Commission’s Constitutional 
Reform was in general adopted by Parliament, and certainly Rossoni 
did not hesitate to claim a victory for fascist labor organizations. But 
a closer examination of the law which Parliament passed soon reveals 
that the victory was equivocal. 

This law, in view of the developments which grew out of it, has be- 
come almost equivalent to a new constitution for the fascist state, though 
in itself it seems to be little more than the legal recognition of syndicates^ 
a reform which had been carried long ago in other states. It is known as 

The Law of April 3, 1926, n. 563, entitled The Legal Discipline of Col- 
lective Labor Relations.” It consists of twenty-three Articles divided 
into three Parts. In the first part the fascist syndicates and confedera- 
tions and their collective contracts are legally recognized; in the second, 
compulsory labor tribunals are established; and in the third, strikes and 
lockouts are prohibited. Without attempting to summarize the various 
provisions we must record the developments which took place during 
the discussion of critical articles. 

a. Fascist syndicates embodied in the state 

According to Article I, no syndicate can be recognized which does 
not include at least ten per cent of the members of its category or occupa- 
tion. The low figure of ten per cent was necessary, not in order to favor 
fascist organizations in preference to opposition organizations (as the 
opposition charged), but rather in order to include those provinces, 
especially in the south, in which any labor organization still includes 
but a small percentage of the workers. 

Anti-fascist organizations can easily be excluded under the formula: 
^^thc directors must give proof of capacity, morality and unswerving 
national loyalty.” The Reform Commission’s formula on this head was 
more generous, requiring merely that the syndicate must not be con- 
trary to the general interests, in respect of moral and economic ends.” 
It was of course a foregone conclusion that only fascist organizations 
would receive recognition, but the theory is that hereafter the syndicates 
must not be the recognized agents of any political party whatsoever. 

b. The end of the Third Order 

Article II authorizes the legal recognition of middle-class syndicates. 
The Reform Commission had expressly excluded associations of the 



THE NEW CONSTITUTION 


179 

professional classes, since they were governed by existing laws. It had 
erected them into one of the three “ orders ” of the state. But there 
were also traditional reasons for not recognizing such associations; first, 
it would raise the whole question of church orders In the state, and 
secondly, traditional syndicalism had fought shy of middle-class 
syndicates. In the meantime, however, RossonI had discovered that 
the intellectuals ’’ were his allies, and accordingly it was announced 
that the fascist regime is anxious to organize the professions along with 
other “ producers.” More recently, as we shall see, Rossoni succeeded 
in bringing the “ Intellectual Corporations ” definitely under his sway. 

c. The end of mixed syndicates « 

Article III of the original bill read: “The associations mentioned in 
the preceding articles may comprise employers alone, or employees 
alone, or employers and employees together. 

“ Mixed associations of employers and employees must have special 
and separate organs for the representation of employers and of em^ 
ployees and, if they comprise several categories of employees, for that 
of each of these categories; and also common organs for the whole 
association.” 

The parliamentary committee amended It by recognizing no mixed 
syndicates at all and by striking out the second paragraph completely, 
giving as Its reason: “Mixed associations are in practice nothing but 
coordinating and conciliating bodies, and these can continue to develop 
their lines of activity very well without legal recognition.” 

The opposition to the mixed syndicates came both from the em- 
ployers, as we have seen above, and also from international labor bodies 
at Geneva, who made trouble for the fascist representatives, because 
their syndicates contained employers. On this subject Minister Rocco, 
in introducing the amended bill to the Senate, said: “ This does not im- 
ply, and I wish to say this explicitly, the exclusion of mixed syndicates. 
The silence of the law does not mean their prohibition, but merely con- 
firms the present facts, for this type of syndicate is not yet known at 
present. I know very well that there are prejudices of an international 
kind against mixed syndicates, but we can not always give such preju- 
dices a favorable hearing. International legislation is dominated by the 
principles of class struggle, which we are happy to have overcome in 
Italy. Personally I admit that I am very sympathetically inclined 
toward mixed syndicates, I believe that they contain no dangers what- 
soever and that they offer many advantages; above all, psychological 
advantages, notably the possibility of making evident the intimate 
solidarity by which all the factors of pr(xiuction are bound together. 



i8o THE NEW CONSTITUTION 

For we must make everyone understand, industrialists as well as workers, 
that there is an absolute solidarity between the various factors of that 
most important of all the aspects of economic life, production*” Ac- 
cordingly Rocco supported Rossoni, who, not willing to see integralism 
sacrificed entirely, offered an amendment which was carried and which 
constitutes the second paragraph of Article IL It substituted for mixed 
syndicates, in seemingly Innocent terms, the mixed central coordinat- 
ing bodies ” which in ordinary syndicalist terminology were known as 
corporations. In fact this vague little paragraph and a similar one in 
Article X, slipped In by Rossoni when nobody was looking, later became 
the chief legal basis for the erection of the corporate state,” as we shall 
see later. But that at this time there was no clear idea of what these 
central organs were to be like, is revealed by the questions which Par- 
liament raised: “How will these central bodies of coordination arise? 
How are they organized? How do they work? ” To these questions only 
the vaguest answers were given and Minister Rocco even suggested: 
“ The members of syndicates who will have the direction of the economic 
life of the country and will regulate the relations between classes, must 
constitute an elite body of men of capacity and of conviction. When 
the day comes when all employers and all Italian workmen will have 
this capacity, this consciousness of the goal to be reached, then and then 
alone, syndicates will automatically become corporations.” 

d. Finances 

In the matter of financing the syndicates, the original draft had at- 
tempted to establish a fixed and uniform sum of fees, but the Com- 
mittee of the Chamber of Deputies changed it to one day’s wages, and in 
the case of employers’ associations, one day’s wages for each employee 
employed by each employer. But this was difficult to apply in many 
cases and regulations adopted by the Grand Council of January 3, 1927, 
in general used the average wage of the category or occupation as a basis 
for fixed fees, and established rates well under the maximum allowed 
by the law. It was also expressly stated that though these fees resembled 
general taxes, they can be used only for the work of the syndicates and 
corporations. 

e. Syndical monopoly 

The law recognizes only a single syndicate for any one category. This 
represents a compromise on a much debated issue. One extreme was 
represented by the Reform Commission under liberalistic influence; 
which wanted to recognize as many actual syndicates as were able to 
meet the “ moral and economic ” qualifications. The other extreme was 



THE NEW CONSTITUTION i8i 

represented by Sorellan syndicalists, who had reacted strongly in the 
direction of nationalism (Panunzio, for example), and who wanted com- 
pulsory membership of every employer or worker in a single syndicate 
which thus enjoyed a monopoly for its particular category, prohibiting 
all others. In the present law the one legally recognized syndicate has 
theoretically no monopoly since independent syndicates are permitted 
and no one is forced to join; but practically, since everyone is taxed for 
the support of the legally recognized syndicate, which is given complete 
authority to make contracts for both members and non-members, there 
is every inducement to join and only extreme political hostility could 
prevent a complete monopoly. 

In defending this provision before the Senate Rocco said: “The un- 
limited liberty of establishing In a single profession an indefinite number 
of syndical organizations having divergent or antagonistic tendencies is 
incompatible with the concept of the unity of Interest in the profession. 
With unlimited syndical liberty a syndicate is a weapon of war, not an 
instrument of social peace. One syndicate competes with another at the 
expense of the workers collectively. And since there is no public 
authority to determine which syndicate really represents the workers, 
the victory goes to the strongest. Especially in our country, as was ob- 
served during the discussion in the Chamber of Deputies, the liberty of 
syndicates led to a multiplication of workers’ organizations. Political 
parties divided the workers Into so many groups that they were placed 
in a very disadvantageous position when they had to face their em- 
ployers who never had more than one organization. In fact the Interests 
of a single category of workers or of a single profession can not be ade- 
quately defended except by a single organization, and the unitary prin- 
ciple of syndicate organization is a logical presupposition of the prac- 
tical utility of collective labor contracts as well as of the beneficent 
operation of the labor tribunals.” And Senator Schanzer in his report 
to the Senate said: “ It is important above all else that we get rid of 
the idea that these organizations of the social order should be instru- 
ments of political strife and a means whereby politicians and political 
groups are enabled to put themselves in power. The syndicate recog- 
nized by public law is by itself a non-political organ. The men who di- 
rect it may have their political opinions, but the syndicate as such has 
no political function. In short, we must finally establish the separation 
of syndicalism and politics.” 

f. Confederations 

The next issue to be debated was the matter of confederations. The 
mere mention of only three or four great national confederations, which 



iSa 


THE NEW CONSTITUTION 

were reminiscent of the three orders ” of the Reform Commission as 
well as of Rossoni’s corporations, immediately brought down a storm 
of protest from the existing national confederations. The Maritime 
Federation, under Giulietti, at the time was still d’Annunzian and has 
only quite recently been incorporated in the fascist confederation. It 
refused flatly to renounce its independence. The F ede ration of Trans- 
portation, the Association of Italian Banks, the Confederation of Landed 
Proprietors, and other powerful organizations feared they were to be 
wiped out entirely or at least subordinated to the great Confederation 
of Industry, and accordingly sent in memorials, and proposed amend- 
ments guaranteeing their independence. Minister Rocco admitted that 
the aim was to unify the national organization as much as possible; but 
agreed that exceptions might be made In certain cases. In any case, he 
said, the law does not specify and the matter is to be left to the discre- 
tion of the government. As we shall see when we examine the Rules 
and Regulations,” the government decided to yield to the existing 
confederations. 

g. Liberty and authority 

The president or secretary of any association may be nominated or 
elected, according to the constitution of the association. But these offi- 
cers must have the approval of the Ministry of the Interior, which ap- 
proval may be revoked at any time. The original draft added the 
approval of the Prefect, but the Committee cut this out on the ground 
that the syndicates must be safeguarded from local politics. By the 
Grand Council of June 1926 government intervention was further 
limited. Minister Rocco explained: ^^This rigorous control does not 
infringe on the autonomy of the syndicate nor on the free development 
of its internal and external activities. In fact, the rules which govern 
the internal life and external activities of a syndicate are given it by its 
own constitution, which every association must have and which, though 
it must be approved by Royal Decree . . . , is framed by the association 
itself and by it the life of the syndicate is, within the limits of the law, 
freely regulated.” Or, as Senator Schanzer more succinctly said: They 
are free to submit themselves to the approval of the competent au- 
thority!” 

h. Collective labor contracts 

The Reform Commission had said very little about labor contracts, 
merely suggesting that contracts entered into by legally recognized syn- 
dicates should be enforced by law. 

But In the meantime Rossoni’s Confederation had been actively en- 
gaged in building up a network of collective labor contracts. In fact 



THE NEW CONSTITUTION 


183 

it was precisely his success in making these contracts which gave his 
organization its practical power and its hold on the laboring classes. 
Though private contracts are still being made, the collective contracts 
are rapidly supplanting them. The system had already been officially 
recognized by the Pact of the Vidoni Palace at Rome, October 2, 1925, 
which we discussed above. Now it is given increased scope and author- 
ity, and the funds established by Article V guarantee the legal enforce- 
ment of the contracts. 

The contracts are now really more than contracts, for though they 
have a private origin they become public norms and are enforced like 
laws by the labor tribunals. To quote Senator Schanzer: “The fact 
that the collective contracts are obligatory erga omnes, that is, even 
over those who took no part in the negotiations, as are also obligatory 
the general regulations for labor and labor conditions, laid down by 
the central organs of coordination between syndicates, confers on such 
collective contracts and on such general norms a character which tran- 
scends the law of contract and places them on the plane of a special 
public law. They have an intermediate position between simple con- 
tracts and administrative regulations, which fact explains the special 
forms of publicity required of them.” 

To the objection raised In the Chamber of Deputies that these con- 
tracts would attempt to establish an artificial standardization of working 
conditions, Belloni replied: “ It is always possible in a collective agree- 
ment to take account of particular rules and conditions for particular 
sub-classes of production or for individual firms, as has already been 
done during the last few years.” 

By means of the collective contracts Rossoni hopes to realize the 
“ capitalization of labor ” which is one of his favorite ideas. By this 
formula he means a definite system of profit-sharing, which Is to be 
embodied in the new contracts. The dividends and profits which capital 
is supposed to earn must be calculated, according to him, by adding 
the labor force to the capital in order to determine the amount invested. 
Each laborer as well as each dollar is a unit of investment, and this 
fact must be recognized in the new collective contracts, he says. But 
this has remained mere theory, though there is a vague reference to it 
in the Labor Charter. 

i. Public employees excluded 

The original draft recognized certain associations of state employees, 
but curtailed their rights to such an extent that the Committee thought 
It simpler not to recognize them at all. Hence the law permits, but 
does not legalize associations of public employees; except associations 



i 84 the new constitution 

of soldiers, police, government officers and professors, which are expressly 
prohibited. 

The practical reasons for this article will be obvious enough to the 
reader. The theory, however, is a little subtle. Minister Rocco ex- 
plained to the Chamber of Deputies: "‘The relations between public 
political agencies and their employees are by their very nature such that 
they do not admit of legally recognized syndicate organization, for it is 
inconceivable that the laws should recognize organs of defense for any 
categories or classes by whom they would be directed against bodies 
which represent the general interest. These bodies already have obliga- 
tions toward their dependents which exclude them from the realm of 
private contracts. To treat their dependents justly is already an ob- 
ligation of the state and other public bodies, which they must keep be- 
cause of their Inherently ethical nature/’ 

Associations of professors were put on the prohibited list after the 
following speech by Mussolini in the Chamber of Deputies : 

“ Syndicate associations (of state employees) are not recognized by 
law but they may exist in fact; on the other hand, such associations are 
expressly forbidden for officials, sub-officials, etc. I believe this list 
is not complete; I believe we should distinguish among dependents 
of the state between those who perform their work In an office and those 
who perform a service, those who fulfil merely economic functions and 
those who fulfil functions not of an economic nature. . . . 

There are other dependents of the state whose associations should 
be prohibited. The lists are being completed, and I might as well 
say it now, they will include professors in intermediate and higher in- 
stitutions of learning. . . . Let us say it clear and loud ! The profes- 
sor fulfils a function in national life much more delicate than that 
performed by the official of a public service or by the magistrate. 
The professor, who molds minds and consciences, and can make of men 
either heroes or cowards, has an extremely important function in the 
life of the nation. Hence he must be an atom, not a group or association, 
in the state.” 

The following associations of state employees have already been 

authorized ” : railroad workers, postal-telegraph, letter carriers and 
rural postal agents, state telephones, primary schools, tax collectors, and 
the General Fascist Association of Public Employees. 

j. Labor tribunds 

The proposal of a system of labor tribunals, which is established in 
Part II of this law, did not come from the Reform Commission. It 



THE NEW CONSTITUTION 185 

had contented itself with giving the proposed Provincial Chambers cer- 
tain arbitral powers, analogous to and in fact continuing the functions 
of the Collegi dei probiviri; but it had not intended to throw the whole 
matter of labor regulation into the courts. This idea came from certain 
syndicalist quarters, notably from Sergio Panunzio, whose theory of the 
state is constructed around it. He urged a system of economic magis- 
trates similar to the one embodied here. It received the approval 
of Rossoni^s organization and of Mussolini and in this way came to be 
embodied in the present law. 

This provision, as may be imagined from what has been said above, 
caused a dispute, which brings into relief some of the most serious 
conflicts of interests and views, which the new legislation had to face. 
It was hailed by its sponsors as the most revolutionary of all, accomplish- 
ing in the field of labor legislation, by putting an end to the auto- 
defense of classes,” what was accomplished In the field of private law 
by substituting court procedure for duels or feuds. But the industrialists 
objected. I give the story at length. 

Article XIII as first drafted and submitted to the Chamber of Deputies 
contained the following additional paragraphs: 

“ The jurisdiction of the Court of Appeals acting as a labor tribunal 
Is obligatory for all controversies relative to the application of contracts 
or other existing regulations. 

It is also obligatory for all controversies relative to the determination 
of new labor conditions, when these involve controversies between agri- 
cultural employers and employees or between agencies of public services 
or necessities and their employees. 

^^When they involve controversies relative to the determination of 
new labor conditions arising between other categories of employers and 
employees, the jurisdiction of the Court of Appeals is optional, and in 
order to establish it the consent of both parties is necessary, but once 
established It becomes obligatory, as in the previous cases.” 

In defending this, Rocco said: “ It would certainly have been desirable 
to have made the jurisdiction of the Court of Appeals acting as a labor 
tribunal absolute, that is to say, that the parties should have been forced 
to submit to it, so that simply the judicial decision would have con- 
stituted a legal judgment as Is the case in all civil judgments. However, 
it was impossible to attain this goal at once. Even stronger than the 
opposition of genuine interests is that of prejudices and old mental 
habits, which give rise to fears that the decision of the judge would be 
disregarded by those employers who may be angered to the point of 
rebellion, especially those whose work is least appreciated by the 
populace at large, as for instance the employers of industrial labor. 



i86 THE NEW CONSTITUTION 

It is feared that at present, during a period in the life of industry which 
is still critical, it would be unwise offhand to entrust the terms of labor 
contracts to a judge. Perhaps this diffidence has been increased by the 
influence of theoretical preconceptions based on the doctrines of economic 
liberalism. 

“We realize perfectly that the structure of this law departs from the 
principles of liberalistic economics. But the failure of the liberal 
economy in this field has been demonstrated so clearly by the facts, that 
I need not dwell on it. The failure has been total and irremediable, for 
even while the Liberal regime still flourished, labor conditions were no 
longer determined by the law of supply and demand, but by the 
political strength of the organizations. In practice, the law of supply 
and demand has ceased to operate; in its place there ruled only the 
will of the stronger. It Is undeniable that the necessary equilibrium of 
economic life can be established much better by the intervention of an 
impartial judge. All the more since, given a brake on the exercise of 
private force, the free play of supply and demand can automatically 
be resumed and in normal cases will reach solutions without hindrance, 
which cases will furnish the labor tribunals with a sound basis for their 
decisions. Nor is this the first time in our legislation that the magistrate 
is asked to determine just prices, or in general to establish the manner 
in which private employment is to be regulated. . . . The truth is that 
the ma^strate must continually regulate legal relations by his prudent 
judgment, for the laws can not foresee the particular cases and usually 
merely give the general lines and principles for the solution of con- 
troversies and in most judgments it is the magistrate who creates special 
norms valid for concrete cases. Experience teaches that the mag- 
istrate performs this task excellently, however diversified and 
difficult it may be, both from a technical point of view and from the 
point of view of the material submitted to him. . * . In spite of this 
fact, however, we have been willing to indulge these prejudices, being 
assured that the experiment of labor jurisdiction which is about to be 
made will win out by the eloquent testimony of facts.” 

Belloni, in his report of the House Committee, emphasized the differ- 
ence between judicial decision involving merely the application of old 
contracts, and judicial participation in the framing of new ones. The 
former could be carried on on a legal basis, but the latter entered the 
field of political and economic administration, in which cases the judge 
has no law to guide him, but must weigh interests and policies. Then 
he continued: 

“The Miaisteris speech in which he expounded the design of the 
law, amply explained the motives which induced the government to take 



THE NEW CONSTITUTION 187 

the course it did, In spite of many reasons which militated In favor of an 
obligatory jurisdiction of the tribunals In all cases. Now we think 
that the government did very well to adopt the path It did; and this, 
to be sure, not for the reasons on which the Liberal school bases its 
objections to the right of state intervention in the economic conflicts 
between capital and labor, but because the conditions under which in- 
dustry and commerce are carried on make it very difficult for a judge 
to fix the norms which ought to govern labor relations with that as- 
surance so essential to a judge, that by his decision he is not doing 
injustice to one or both parties. These difficulties are of an entirely 
different order in agriculture and in industry; in the latter the ordering 
and organization of production and labor are subject to much more 
complex and delicate rules than in agriculture, and in addition the 
consequences of an interruption of labor in industry can be offset in 
whole or in part by a more intensive activity afterward, while the conse- 
quences of an interruption of labor in agriculture at certain times of the 
year may be irreparable and endanger the supply of produce necessary 
to support the population. Imagine, for example, a strike at harvest time ; 
imagine a strike, one which actually occurred during the times im- 
mediately preceding the rise of fascism, of the laborers in charge of 
cattle and other domestic animals, and you will understand immediately 
why the state can not afford to remain Inactive and indifferent in the 
face of such collective disputes. Moreover, whereas industrial activity is 
not limited, at least not up to a certain point, and if one factory closes, 
the loss can be, and certainly will be, promptly supplied by the greater 
productivity of other existing firms, or by the founding of new ones, 
agricultural activity is limited in space and hence the collective whole 
can not tolerate that a greater or smaller area of soil, the precious 
gift of nature, be withdrawn from cultivation. 

“Hence this great branch of national production, agriculture, is 
hastening In many ways toward that grand realization of the fascist 
idea of the state, toward that new political atmosphere which we long for, 
for that sense of discipline and of order which at last has penetrated the 
minds of all citizens, especially of the producing classes, thus permitting 
it to evolve the most favorable conditions and to attain those ends of 
complete pacification and of social well being which it pursues.^ 

Farinacci made much the same point in his speech, emphasizing 
agriculture’s peculiarly critical position in Italian economy. Hereupon 
Barbiellini-Amidei, in behalf of the agriculturalists, presented a motion 
censuring the attitude of the industrialists; and when BennI tried to 
defend them the syndicalists as well as the agrarians opposed him. At 
this point Mussolini himself took the floor and said: 



i88 


THE NEW CONSTITUTION 


‘U . , This truly basic law considers two economies, industrial econ- 
omy and agricultural. ... I believe a law so constructed remains a 
mutilated law. I believe that either we are taking a step forward in in- 
dustrial economy or a step backwards in rural. In short, either option 
or compulsion for both. For I do not believe that there is a clear separa- 
tion between the two economies, if it is true as it is that agriculture 
is being industrialized and if it is true that from the products of the land 
come the raw materials of several of the greatest industries of our 
country: the textile and chemical industries. . . . 

I believe we must rather arrive at a unitary conception of material 
economy. To be sure the grain which Is left, or was left standing in the 
fields, is a net loss, but at times a strike which interrupts production at a 
critical moment when international competition is unbridled may have 
even more serious consequences. We need the courage to go ahead in 
this field as well, a field which is supposed to be unexplored and full of 
the unforeseen. There are no lions, and in any case the lions are would- 
be wild beasts ! , . . 

Those who hesitate should also consider that in discussing this 
provision they must take the regime and the government into account. 
The corporations are fascist in as much as they want to bear the name of 
fascist corporations and to carry on their work under the shadow of the 
lictor^s rods. They must control their actions and not do anything which 
may diminish the productive efficiency of the nation or create difficulties 
for the government. 

Hence besides the work of control which the fascist corporations 
are themselves conducting, there is the sovereign control of the govern- 
ment. What has taken place during these three years of syndicalist 
practice? I am not the secretary of the corporations; but there has 
not been a single great question in industry or commerce involving 
the syndicates — when the law for private employment was being dis- 
cussed; when the contract of the seamen was being discussed — I say, 
there has not been a single question of great importance to the syndicates 
which I have not examined and sometimes solved. 

This being the case, I believe the Confederation of Industry can 
take a step forward and will do so, for I also believe firmly that the 
advantages will far outweigh the inconveniences. 

“ Honorable colleagues, before closing I wish to give you the reason 
why I have arrived at this conclusion. I have arrived at this conclusion 
from a point of departure which is fundamental to my understanding 
of the Italian situation whenever I examine it. I consider the Italian 
nation to be in a permanent state of war. I have already said and I 
repeat that the next five or ten years are decisive for the destiny of our 



THE NEW CONSTITUTION 


189 

people. They are decisive because the international struggle has 
widened and will widen still more and we who have come on the stage 
of the world a little behind time, can not afford to waste our energies.” 

Hereupon Antonio S. Benni, President of the Confederation of 
Industry, arose and after giving his reasons for opposing compulsory 
labor tribunals in industry, said: “As a well disciplined Italian citizen I 
accept the way which the head of the government points out to me and 
shall follow it with all the enthusiasm in my power, and with that 
discipline w^hich the Italian industrial class has always professed towards 
the government and towards fascism ” Whereupon Belloni in behalf 
of the Parliamentary Committee also expressed his approval of the 
amendment proposed by Mussolini, 

k. The end of strikes and lockouts 

The prohibition of strikes and lockouts (Article XVIII) also goes 
much further than the proposals of the Reform Commission; as Rocco 
explained, it extends the fundamental concept of the prohibition of 
“ auto-defense ” to economic groups and issues, a step made possible 
by the institution of an omnicompetent labor tribunal. The discussion 
in both Houses made it evident that the government intended to give 
this the broadest interpretation, practically forbidding any strikes or 
lockouts whatsoever, certainly those of a political nature. 

On the other hand, the first important interpretive decision handed 
down by the Court of Appeals of Rome, made it clear that the courts 
would not use the law as a pretext to infringe on the legitimate freedom 
of individual workers, or small groups. The judgment was in favor 
of the defendants, a few workmen of Tivoli who near the end of the day 
had refused to make another trip with their grain carts, when they saw 
that it would have made them work overtime.^® 

Some doubts were expressed on the ability of the government to en- 
force the law against huge bodies of strikers. The difficulty was admit- 
ted for extreme cases, but it was pointed out that the growing syndicate 
organization and growing public opinion in favor of the law made en- 
forcement easier. In the case of employers who might close their 
factories and profit more than their fines cost them, it was maintained that 
such tactics could be severely punished on the basis of other laws. Also 
it was thought quite possible to force a factory owner to keep his factory 
open unless the court had made bad blunders in its calculations and 
had sanctioned conditions which made profits impossible, in which case 
the judgment of the court could be reviewed. 

V. Lo Stato Corforathm^ Fehnmry 1927, pp. 9-1 1. 



190 INTERPRETING THE CONSTITUTION 

Strikers among employees of the state or in public service are punished 
more severely. State employees or those in public services are 
punished severely if they fall to do all in their power to secure the con- 
tinual operation of their services during any strike or lockout. Strikes 
or lockouts having political motives are severely punished. Heavy 
penalties are imposed on those who fail to abide by a sentence of a 
labor tribunal. 

F. The Corporate State 

The twenty-three articles of this Law, which constitutes the economic 
framework for the new Italian State, really settled less than they started. 
The need for “interpretation” and detailed regulations had already 
been expressed. And both sides were decidedly nervous. Many em- 
ployers refused to have anything to do with the “ collective contracts ” 
and had to be threatened into submission by the ever handy fascist offi- 
cials. The independent and powerful employers^ confederations were 
nervous because of the rumors of consolidation. Neither side was any 
too confident of the labor tribunals, the employers because they had 
been forced to yield to political pressure, and to political jurisdiction; 
the labor leaders because they had preferred to trust their “ mixed ” 
syndicates and corporations rather than the courts as the organs of 
“ economic solidarity.” Mixed syndicates, however, had been doomed, 
and their surreptitious substitutes, the “ central coordinating bodies,” 
were mysterious entities, a vague hope for the integralist labor leaders, 
and a disquieting remnant of sentimentality in the eyes of the supposedly 
more hard-headed business men. 

But there were even more general issues in the air. The law which 
we have been discussing had embodied but the first part of the Report of 
the Reform Commission, a part which in the eyes of the reformers was 
but a preliminary step toward the “ corporate organization of the state,” 
and ineffective unless linked to it. As it now stood, it was apparently 
independent and had passed Parliament, at least in the eyes of the ma- 
jority, as little more than a thoroughgoing piece of labor organization, 
any question of constitutional reform having been carefully excluded. 
On the other hand, responsible fascist politicians and publicists began 
to proclaim the law as revolutionary, the realization of the new fascist 
state, and the corporate organization of society. Was this to be taken 
as prophecy or merely as normal newspaper lunacy? 

Under these circumstances Rocco and his colleagues set out to draft 
“ rules and regulations,” and finally having secured the approval of the 
Cabinet, presented them to the Grand Council of the Party in June. 
Rocco, it turned out, had been reconstructing his social philosophy a bit. 



NEW RULES AND REGULATIONS 191 

and had arrived at the following already famous formula: ^^The new 
organization of labor ... is developing in a twofold direction: one 
vertical and the other horizontal. The vertical organization is being 
realized outside the state but under the control of the state, and com- 
prises syndicates of a single category or trade grouped into superior 
organizations, federations or confederations. The horizontal organiza- 
tion is being realized within the state, and comprises all the factors of 
production for each branch of industry. Thus the corporation is being 
organized within the state, Including employers, workers and artisans.” 

Accordingly his draft proposed: 

(1) Three great national unions,” one for employers, one for work- 
ers and one for artisans and the professional classes. 

(2) Fifteen national confederations: six of employers (In Industry, 
commerce, agriculture, maritime and air transportation, land trans- 
portation and inland navigation, banks) ; six of workers (classified Identi- 
cally); and three of the middle classes” (one for artisans, one for 
professional men and one for artists). 

(3) A Ministry of Corporations to unite these confederations hori- 
zontally into the central coordinating bodies.” 

After several nights of lively discussion (the Grand Council does only 
night work!) the following changes were made In this scheme: 

(i) The three unions, obviously reminiscent of the three orders pro- 
posed by the Reform Commission, were replaced by two General 
Confederations which may be recognized.” 

But the employers, having been delighted with the recognition of the 
existing plurality of Employers’ Confederations, saw no need for a 
further union,” since each was jealous of its independence and was run 
by a different group of men. But Rossoni and the labor leaders were 
equally anxious that their single, powerful organization should in no 
way lose its unity. Hence, of the two General Confederations which the 
decree allows^ the ‘^National Confederation of Fascist Syndicates ” was 
immediately formed; that is to say, RossonI’s organization took the word 

corporation ” out of Its name; while the employers took no notice, nor 
have they to this day, of their permission to form a single confederation. 
However, the Confederation of Industry is the natural leader of the 
group in most labor disputes and in dealings with the government 

The third proposed union or order was now parcelled out among these 
two, the federation of artisans being subordinated to the Confederation 
of Industry, and the professional men and artists being combined and 
placed under the Confederation of Fascist Syndicates. This was the 
work of Rossoni, who had already gotten control of several organiza- 
tions of intellectuals and who proceeded as follows. It “ happened ” 



192 NEW RULES AND REGULATIONS 

that just as the Grand Council was deliberating these matters, a national 
convention of intellectuals had been called at Rome, At this convention 
Rcssoni had made himself prominent, had emphasized the solidarity 
between manual and intellectual workers/^ and had made it evident 
to the public and to the Grand Council that the convention was favorable 
to his organization. Having induced the Grand Council to take this 
step, he created the Federation of Intellectuals. In this way the pro- 
fessional classes passed bodily into the hands of the Rossoni group, 
and the third order ” or middle class ’’ which had played an impor- 
tant role in the plans and theories of the Reform Commission, passed 
out of existence. 

(2) The fifteen confederations were thus reduced to thirteen, organ- 
ized as follows: 

A. Employers’ Organizations. 

1. National Fascist Confederation of Industry. 

2. National Fascist Confederation of Agriculturalists. 

3. National Fascist Confederation of Merchants. 

4. .National Fascist Confederation of Maritime and Aerial Transpor- 
tation. 

5. National Fascist Confederation of Land Transportation and In- 
land Navigation. 

6. National Fascist Confederation of Bankers. 

B. Labor; The National Confederation of Fasdst Syndicates, composed 
of: 

7. National Federation of Fascist Syndicates in Industry. 

8. National Federation of Fasdst Syndicates in Agriculture. 

9. National Federation of Fascist Syndicates in Commerce. 

10. National Federation of Fascist Syndicates in Maritime and Aerial 
Transportation. 

11. National Federation of Fascist Syndicates in Land Transporta- 
tion and Inland Navigation. 

12. National Federation of Fasdst Syndicates in Banks. 

13. National Federation of Fascist Syndicates of Intellectuals. 

One of the most serious disputes concerned lesser federations, but 
really underlay the issues we have just discusseii. Rocco’s draft (Ar- 
ticle 5), following recommendations made by Senator Schanzer and the 
Senate Committee/® had provided that artisans, small shopkeepers and 
tradesmen, owners or tenants of small farms which they cultivate them- 


^ cf. Also Rocco^s remarks on this subject before the Senate. 



MINISTRY OF CORPORATIONS 


193 

selves^ as well as share holding tenant farmers {mezzadrij mHayers) 
should be organized under employers^ organizations, if they employ 
manual labor and should constitute independent associations if their 
establishments are exclusively domestic. This was the result of a 
memorial sent in by the landed proprietors asking for a separate organ- 
ization. To this Rossoni objected strenuously, not only because it 
would have broken up many of his rural syndicates and their contracts 
and thrown small tenant farmers, whose interests are usually those of 
labor, into the hands of the big agriculturalists, but also because it 

split the unity of categories,” which was the basis of the whole syndical 
organization. Finally Mussolini personally worked out a compromise, 
whereby all artisans, small tradesmen, etc., were to form their own 
federations subordinated to the employers’ Confederation of Industry 
and all shareholders {mHayers) were to be organized into federations 
subordinate to the labor confederation of agricultural syndicates. When 
the artisans submitted their constitution for approval, their organization 
was called the Ente Nazionale Artigiani (National Association of 
Artisans) and it was to all intents and purposes an independent body. 
But in 1927 its head, Brunati, resigned and it was reorganized as the 
F ederazione Fascista Autonoma delle Communitd Artigiane d^ltalia. 
This brings it a step nearer to the confederations to which it will no 
doubt ultimately be subordinated. 

(3) The organization of the Corporations and the Ministry of Cor- 
porations remains as In the Rocco draft, except that because of the 
changes just described, the corporate or horizontal organization is con- 
fronted by only two great vertical organizations, corresponding roughly 
to capital and labor, instead of the three of the original draft, in which 
the “ middle class ” or intellectuals ” were supposed to form a sort 
of social balance of power. All that remains of the proposed third 
order is a number of Independent organizations of various kinds which 
for one reason or another could not be embodied in the double hierarchy 
scheme, e.g. The Cooperatives, The Dopo-Lavoro^ the Artisans, etc. 
These hitherto independent organizations are not being subjected to 
political pressure, their old directors are being forced out and they 
are being given temporary” organizations which look forward to 
their being definitely incorporated into the hierarchy of fascist syndicates 
as soon as possible. . 

As it is, therefore, the government in the form of the Ministry of Cor- 
porations, is supposed to synthesize in peaceful cooperative production, 
two traditional enemies to whom it has given new and powerful weapons 
and whom it has arrayed more definitely than ever on opposed fronts. 
The organization of this horizontal ” order is therefore extremely im- 



MINISTRY OF CORPORATIONS 


194 

portant. To it is devoted one of the eight main divisions of the Rules 
and Regulations^” which I outline as follows. (Only words in quotation 
marks are the words of the decree itself.) 

Part IIL Of the Central Organs of Coordination or Corporations ” 

Article 42 

The organs of coordination suggested by Article j of the Law of 
April jj igjdy have a national character. They unite the national syndi- 
cal organizatiojis of the various factors of production, employers and 
workers {intellectual and manual) in any given branch of production, 
or for one or more given categories of industry or trade 

The organizatiofis thus coordinated constitute a corporation^ 

A corporation is constituted by decree of the Minister of Corpora- 
tions 

Article 43 

A corporation does not possess legal personality, but co 7 istitutes an 
administrative organ of the state 

The decree which constitutes a corporation also determines its func- 
tions and powers. By the same decree its organization is established and 
the duties and powers of its central a^id local officials are regulated 

Article 44 

These corporative organs in order that they may serve their purpose 
have among others the following functions: 

(a) to conciliate the controversies which may arise between the or- 
ganizations coordinated and to draw up the norms suggested in Article 
10 of the Law of April 3, IQ26; 

(h) to promote, encourage and sustain all measures intended to co- 
ordinate production and improve its organization; 

( c) to establish employment agencies wherever their need is evident; 
where such offices may be established, a royal decree may prohibit 
independent mediation and the operation of other employment 
agencies; . . . 

(d) to regulate training and apprenticeship, drawing up the general 
norms necessary to this end and to see that they are enforced. Suck 
norms are to be applied to all collective labor contracts 

Article 43 

In the making of collective contracts the coordinated organizations are 
to remain autonomous, except in cases where efforts at conciliation by 
the corporation are prescribed by the law. 



MINISTRY OF CORPORATIONS 


^95 


Article 46 

The presidents of the corporate bodies are nominated and recalled 
by decree of the M mister of Corporations, Every corporation has a 
council composed of the delegates of the organizations zvhich are co- 
ordinated by it. In the Cotin cil the representation of organizations of 
employers must equal that of the employees {intellectual and manual 
taken together).'' 

The manner of nomination of such delegates^ the f mictions of the 
Council and the pozvers of the president are established by the decree 
zvhich constitutes the corporate body." 

In any case this must be made to depend directly on the Minister of 
Corporations." 

The decree embodying these rules and regulations (103 Articles) was 
signed July i, 1926. The following day another decree created the 
Ministry of Corporations. Mussolini, in line with his general policy, 
made himself Minister of Corporations and made Suardo (his right- 
hand man) Undersecretary. This immediately gave “ corporationism " 
immense popularity and prestige. However Mussolini had already told 
the Grand Council in very strong language, that he would not stand for 
an elaborate bureaucracy of politicians in the Ministry, that he proposed 
to establish corporations only where there was a definite call for them, 
and that he would put them under the direction of a few competent 
men, actively engaged in the business which was being corporated. 

In November, when other troubles broke over Mussolini^s head, he 
and Suardo were forced to shift their attentions to the department of the 
interior. He appointed as Undersecretary of Corporations, Giuseppe 
Bottai, director of the Critica Fascista^ and formerly one of the leaders 
of the Fascist Cooperatives, which were closely allied with the syndicalist 
movement. This brought the Ministry of Corporations much closer 
in touch with active syndicalists. For Mussolini and Suardo never 
were syndicalists and though favorable to these developments they 
really represent a middle ground in the Party and in the government, 
trying to keep the syndicalistic, the liberallstic, and the nationalistic 
wings of fascism In a state of equilibrium. 

The Ministry of Corporations was immediately given important 
work to do, such as bringing capital and labor together on specific prob- 
lems, framing the new Charter of Labor, working out the details of the 
system of syndicate fees, the examination and registration of the con- 
stitutions of new syndicates and confederations, etc., but this work, of 
course, did not require explicit corporations, as Rossoni wanted them. 

A decree of March 17, 1927, definitely established the nature of the 



196 ORGANIZATION OF CORPORATIONS 

corporations. There are to be seven of them, corresponding to the kinds 
of confederations. The presidency of each corporation is to be assigned 
to some citizen who has distinguished himself in production, labor, or 
in the direction of public offices.” He Is to serve without salary, but Is 
to be granted fees for specific services. In the various provinces the 
local functions of the Ministry of Corporations are to be assigned to 
some official of the prefecture or of the Ministry of National Economy. 
This means, in short, that the corporations are to have a very limited 
budget and little independent personnel. The work will be done di- 
rectly by the Ministry of Corporations and hence these largely nominal 
bodies will be not merely organs of the state,” as the theory demands, 
but really mere additional powers for present politicians. 

As a result, not a single corporation has been formally created. There 
is some truth in the claim that if the government now tried to form a 
corporation It would face serious difficulties, since both syndical groups 
are jealous of each other’s power and afraid that a coordinating body ” 
might upset the present equilibrium. But there is still more truth in the 
fact that this sort of corporation, except in extreme crises, is at present 
superfluous; for the negotiating of labor contracts, conciliation by the 
labor tribunals, and in general all business which arises between the 
syndicates, can be carried on effectively and directly, without the inter- 
vention of the corporation. The corporation thus represents little more 
than a continual threat which the government can use against refractory 
confederations. At best it is a name for the implicit cooperation of the 
various classes in production, which, the more habitual and spontaneous 
it becomes, the more it automatically transforms Italy Into a corpor- 
ate state.” In a sense, almost anything the Minister of Corporations 
does may be called an act of the corporate state. For instance, every 
now and then he calls together the secretaries of the Party, of the Con- 
federations of Industry, and of the Confederation of Syndicates, to 
examine some problem, e,g, industrial policy, wage policy, or high cost 
of living. Such meetings really perform the function of corporations. 
But the corporations have more than a nominal value; their psycho- 
logical value is very important. At last the ideal of Rocco, Rossoni and 
the integralists ” has an official sanction and a legal basis, however 
much its practical embodiment may have changed. In fact, the corpor- 
ationists were so encouraged by these developments and their activities 
so stimulated that the situation has already been carried beyond the 
bounds foreseen by either the Law of April 3 or the Decree of July i. 

For in the meantime Rossoni too was working. In Article 10 of tie 
Law of April 3, he had inserted the provision that the corporations or 
central organs of coordination ” establish general principles for labor 



MAGNA CHARTA OF LABOR 


197 

and labor contracts. These general norms for labor contracts which 
the decree had entrusted to the corporations now became his own active 
concern. Not waiting for corporations to do the work, he proceeded to 
draft the general principles on which future labor legislation was to be 
based as well as to codify the chief provisions which he was already em- 
bodying in current collective contracts. This was to serve as the basis 
for the government’s Labor Charter {carta di lavoro), a document 
widely heralded as a new magna charta for labor, a substitute for the 
“ Rights of Man,” a genuine Social Contract ” to replace the fictitious 
one of the French Revolution, and in general as an explicit statement of 
the constitutional principles of the corporate state. 

Rossoni wanted it to be sufficiently detailed in its enumeration of the 
legal rights of labor to serve as a basis for the decisions of the Labor 
Tribunals. Hence his draft, published in the Lavoro d^Italia and In the 
Stirpe of January 1927, enumerated regulations to govern labor condi- 
tions under the following fifteen heads: 

(1) Employment and employment bureaus: The offices of the Na- 
tional Confederation of Fascist Syndicates are to keep employment 
records and statistics and to act as information bureaus and employ- 
ment bureaus, and all requests for help or for employment are to go 
to these bureaus. 

(2) Discipline; The duties devolving on employers and on employees 
are to be defined, and penalties fixed for violations. 

(3) Hours of work; The eight-hour day is recognized and all de- 
partures from It in exceptional cases are subject to detailed regulation. 

(4) Trial periods: New employees are to be put on trial for a definite 
term, under fixed regulations, after which term the employer Is not free 
to discharge at will. 

(5) Classification of personnel and minimum wages for each class of 
workers. 

(6) Periodical revision and increase of pay. 

(7) Piecework or on contract: Regulations to prevent rates lower 
than the standard hourly wage, 

(8) Vacations: At least one week’s vacation for every person em- 
ployed a year or longer. 

(9) Sickness: Provisions for medical care, etc. 

(10) Insurance and Benefits. 

(11) Military service: Persons called into military service are to be 
given preference over all other applicants on their return from duty. 

(12) Discharge of employees: After the period of trial no employee 
may be discharged without a fixed indemnity except for disciplinary 
reasons. 



198 MAGNA CHARTA OF LABOR 

(13) Indemnities for discharged employees, and pensions for de- 

pendents in case of death. 

(14) Employees^ protection in case of closure or change of proprietors. 

(15) Labor disputes and contracts must be put in the hands of the 
syndicates recognized by law for the categories involved. 

This draft is evidently a labor document, intended as a defense of 
labor interests and as a legal fortification of the policies of the syndicates. 
It was presented to the January session of the Grand Council and Rossoni 
expected it to pass without serious modification. But he was to be 
disappointed. The Grand Council announced four main heads for the 
Charter, which, though they corresponded in general to the Rossoni 
draft, at least indicated that a rearrangement was under way. These 
heads were: (i) declarations of solidarity between the various factors 
of production in the supreme interest of the nation; (2) organic coordi- 
nation of the laws for the insurance and assistance of workers; (3) co- 
ordination and formulation of the laws protecting labor; (4) general 
rules for the conditions governing labor contracts. The actual codifica- 
tion and formulation of labor law seems to have been intended by these 
resolutions as it was by Rossoni. But shortly after, at the meeting of 
the heads of the confederations of capital and labor called by the Min- 
ister of Corporations to draft the Charter, Bottai emphasized in his 
opening address that they must guard against the temptation to legislate 
in these matters, a tendency carried over, he said, from the old demo- 
cratic mode of thinking; that it was impossible on the basis of the present 
scant experience of fascism to foresee in detail the conditions and rules 
under which Italian labor could operate; and that the Charter must aim 
at expressing general principles rather than at erecting arbitrary norms. 
The heads of the employers’ confederations promptly expressed their 
hearty approval of this bit of wisdom. The text of the Charter was 
published on April 21, the fascist Labor Day, but late in the evening, 
after the big syndicalist celebration was over. It revealed that Rossoni’s 
draft had been considerably modified in the direction of general prin- 
ciples,” and it was expressly stated not to be a legislative document but 
merely a formal declaration of the fascist labor platform. In presenting 
the Charter to the Grand Council for publication, Bottai said, without 
mentioning names of course, but obviously with reference to Rossoni: 
"'^Many persons spontaneously expected a document of the type of a 
codification of labor law, for the legal habit of mind of the past century 
turned by preference to codification. ... In reality, however, the 
tendency of the Labor Charter proceeds in another direction. Pro- 
foundly revolutionary and political, the fascist type of mind could not 

See Appendix No. 24, 



MAGNA CHARTA OF LABOR 


199 


welcome a technical and legal systematization of the labor regulation 
which has been practiced during the last decades, under the impulse 
of extraneous and inorganic motives. It aspired to something more 
than a legislative document. It wanted to give form to the travail which 
it has now borne for almost a decade, and to proclaim to the Italian 
people and to the world the grounds on which it rests, and on which its 
own historic and political individuality are based. Hence the Labor 
Charter could not confine itself to accustomed legal procedure, but was 
destined, without even the appearance or immediate value of a legal 
document, to express the purpose which animates the new organisms 
created by the revolution and to establish a foundation not merely for 
purposes of legislation, but for the whole new mode of being which domi- 
nates our national social life. ...” 

The Charter contains thirty articles, grouped under four heads. The 
first ten, entitled “ On the Corporate State and Its organization ” are a 
summary exposition of the principles and chief provisions of the legis- 
lation which we have outlined above. Numbers 1 1 to 25 are concerned 
with ^^The Collective Labor Contract and labor guarantees.” Here 
the collective contracts are explicitly made obligatory, and each such 
contract must contain precise regulations on all matters concerning 
labor. But in place of the minimum wage and eight-hour day provi- 
sions in Rossoni^s draft the Charter merely lays down the general prin- 
ciple that no fixed rule whatsoever can be prescribed, that salaries must 
be regulated by the fluctuations In the normal cost of living, in the 
general condition of production, and In the returns of labor, that “ the 
consequences of financial and economic crises must be borne equally by 
all the factors of production, and that the responsibility for determining 
them is to be placed on the Corporations and the Labor Tribunals, on the 
basis of data furnished by the Central Institute of Statistics and by the 
various syndical organizations. For, as Bottai explained in his presen- 
tation, “ the Charter recognizes no limits, either maximum or minimum, 
to the possibilities of the material and moral well-being of the indi- 
vidual.” On the subjects of regulation of piecework production, night 
work, one day off a week, annual paid vacations, dismissal, death and 
sickness benefits, military service, change of ownership and such mat- 
ters the Charter is more definite and follows the lines laid down in 
Rossoni’s draft, though it Is less explicit in detailed provisions. In one 
case it goes beyond the Rossoni draft; it explicitly Includes domestic 
servants among those entitled to collective contracts and to sanitary 
working conditions. 

The subject of Employment Bureaus, Articles 22 to 25, caused the 
most serious dispute. Rossoni at the very beginning of his draft stipu- 



200 


SYNDICALISM VS. CORPORATION! SM 

lated that labor distribution and all matters of employment be put (or 
rather, at least in agriculture, be left) in the hands of the Confederation 
of Labor Syndicates. This was denied him, and the Charter provided 
for compulsory government employment bureaus under the Ministry 
of Corporations. However, the local employment bureaus have their 
offices in the Labor Syndicate headquarters and are operated by the 
local officials of the Ministry of National Economy. 

j^fricles 26 to 30 concern Labor insurance, assistance, education 
and instruction” which is, if anything, even more explicit than the 
Rossoni draft, for on these matters there was no serious difference of 
opinion. 

In general, the Charter is rightly and unanimously hailed^by the fas- 
cist syndicalists as the embodiment of their reforms. It explicitly recog- 
nizes the general principles which they laid down, and the particular 
working out of details would in any case be more a matter of the draw- 
ing up of collective contracts than of political legislation. The Labor 
Confederation now has ample legal sanction for its activities and the 
real test of its capacity will be in its bargaining power in drawing up 
the contracts. 

Rossoni, of course, championed the Charter immediately as a great 
achievement of fascist labor organization. It is not without significance, 
however, that of the two chief speeches made on Labor Day at the publi- 
cation of the Charter, that by Bottai does not mention Rossoni, and that 
by Rossoni barely mentions Mussolini. Certainly the corporationism 
of Rossoni must be distinguished from the Ministry of Corporations. 
The latter is looked down upon by Rossoni as little more than a poli- 
ticians’ nfficio, whereas the fascist politicians regard this Ministry as 
their opportunity to subordinate syndicalist organizations to government 
control 

Though there is no serious conflict as yet between Rossoni and Bottai, 
or rather, between syndicalism and corporationism, there is evidence 
that they are constantly diverging and that before long the issue may 
become serious. The revision of the Labor Charter, and the institution 
of government employment agencies, and of price-regulating committees, 
are but the first evidence that the syndicates will be increasingly sub- 
jected to the political control of the Ministry of Corporations. At pres- 
ent the employers’ syndicates feel it more than does Rossoni, but Ros- 
soni’s turn may come soon. In fact, recent numbers of Bottai’s Critica 
Fascista have come out frankly against those who still think too “ syn- 
dicalistically ” and who seem unwilling to accept corporationism whole- 
heartedly. It is all too plain who is meant, and though local labor 

See Appendix No. z6. 



ECONOMIC REPRESENTATION 


201 


leaders are the only persons referred to directly, there is evidently 
friction between the Ministry of Corporations and Rossoni’s confedera- 
tions, In January 1928 the complaints which RossonPs paper, II Lavoro 
dlltalia, made concerning the governments negligence in enforcing the 
Labor Charter, forced Bottai in his report to the Grand Council to admit 
evasions of the new labor law and to promise more strict enforcement 
in the future. 

The issue became especially delicate when it was linked with the 
question of electoral reform. The fundamental question was raised: 
shall the new Parliament be controlled by the syndicate confederations 
or by the agents of the Ministry of Corporations? 

This is the most significant political problem which has arisen out of 
these developments. Both the corporationist politicians and the syndi- 
calist leaders are now concentrating on the corporate parliament and 
economic representation. In January Mussolini hastened the issue by 
announcing the year 1927 as “ the corporate year ” and even dropped a 
casual reference to an economic parliament in place of the “ worn-out 
one.” MussolinPs words have a thousand echoes; and the slightest 
mention by him of such a possibility was enough to set the whole scheme 
on its feet. There was a sudden rush of political job seekers into the 
syndicates ! Mussolini added that the reform of representation could 
not be carried out all at once, but would begin “ at the periphery of the 
state.” This was generally interpreted to mean that municipal or pro- 
vincial syndicalistic elections would be widened until finally an economic 
parliament would be formed. The conservative fascist papers immedi- 
ately took this hint to dampen any rising suspicions that general elec- 
tions were imminent. The syndicates, they said, need not expect that 
the present regime is ready to turn over the government to a new crowd 
of electioneers.” 

Nevertheless, on May 26, the boldest expectations of the corpora- 
tionists were justified, when Mussolini in his big address to the Chamber 
definitely announced that in 1929, at the end of the present parliament, 
the present Chamber would be supplanted by a Corporate Chamber, 

elected by the corporate organizations of the state.” This phrase was 
purposely left vague in order to afford an opportunity for further dis- 
cussion of the manner of electing the Chamber. 

The Rossoni group urged this reform not so much as an end in itself, 
as one last effort to get integral corporations ” syndicalistically or- 
ganized, Le, in accordance with their original aims. They agreed that 
the new parliament should be elected by Corporations. For if the syn- 
dicates were to elect it, the state would not be a genuinely integrated, 
corporate state, since parliament would divide immediately into the 



202 


ECONOMIC REPRESENTATION 

capital and the labor parties. The genuinely corporate parliament, on 
the other hand, must represent the specific horizontal ” interests and 
activities of the nation, not the '' vertical classes. This principle is 
generally accepted by all fascisti. Hence Rossoni urged that a more 
definite and independent organization of corporations would be a neces- 
sary preliminary; for definite organizations would be necessary to carry 
on the election of representatives and other political functions. Thus 
Rossoni hoped that by means of the movement for parliamentary re- 
form, he could gain the unified corporate organization of the nation 
for which he has held out consistently, but in which he has so far been 
frustrated. 

For with the direction which the organization of the Ministry of 
Corporations has taken, an elaborate integral ” organization merely 
for election purposes is hardly possible even if the politicians wanted it. 
At the same time Mussolini announced the new Chamber he also took 
the trouble to “ bury universal suffrage ” officially and to attack election 
machinery in general. And in a circular of July 1927 he explicitly gave 
the Ministry of Corporations the task of determining the mode of 
election for the new Chamber. 

In November 1927 the general provisions of the new scheme were 
decided; in February 1928 the Grand Council adopted and published 
the draft of the new electoral law; and several days later it was enacted 
into law by parliament, practically without change or debate. The 
veteran statesman, Giolitti, arose to denounce the reform as unconstitu- 
tional, but he was politely ignored. 

The law provides that each of the thirteen National Confederations 
shall nominate its representatives. The total number of nominees is to 
be 800, This list will go to the Grand Council of the Fascist Party, 
which, under the guidance of the Ministry of Corporations, selects 
four hundred of them. These four hundred are then submitted as the 
official list to the whole body of syndicate members for approval or 
rejection en bloc. A rejection of this official hand-picked list would be 
tantamount to a general referendum vote of lack of confidence in the 
government. In such an event the law provides as follows : 

Article 8. — In case the designated list of deputies should not be 
approved, the Court of Appeals of Rome will order a new election by 
decree, on the basis of competing lists, and will set a date for the voting 
not earlier than 30 nor later than 45 days after issuing the decree. 

^*In this new election all associations and organizations numbering 
50, coo members regularly registered as electors on the electoral lists 
may present lists of candidates. 

The lists of candidates may not exceed three fourths of the deputies 



SYNDICAL DEMOCRACY OR FASCISM 203 

to be elected. Each list must be accompanied by a symbolical figure 
or design. 

Article 9. — The lists of candidates together with the acceptances of 
the candidates and official documents to prove their regularity, must be 
presented to the Court of Appeals of Rome, acting as a national central 
office, 15 days before the day set for the elections. The Court, having 
verified the regularity of the lists, will submit them to the voters. 

“ After the voting the reports of the offices of the various electoral dis- 
tricts of the Realm will be transmitted by means of the pretors to the 
Court of Appeals of Rome. 

“ The Court of Appeals adds together the number of votes given to 
each list and publishes the outcome of the balloting. 

“ All the candidates on that list which receives the largest number of 
votes will be declared elected. 

“ The places reserved for the minority are to be divided among the 
other lists in proportion to the number of votes each receives.’’ 

How this reform will work in practice remains to be seen. It is 
evidently designed to give the Fascist Party politicians practically com- 
plete power in picking their advisory parliament. Nevertheless it pro- 
vides a machinery whereby the members of the syndicates can directly 
express their disapproval of the government as a whole and can proceed 
to party tactics and elections of party lists. The parties would pre- 
sumably form as capital or labor parties, not as anti-fascist parties, and 
their rivalry would reflect economic rather than political issues. Of 
course, if the fascist politicians should blunder so completely as to lose 
the support of both employers’ and labor organizations, it would be a 
simple matter for these syndicalist organizations to combine and elect 
an opposition parliament. But whether such a parliament would be able 
to exert any effective control, the government not being responsible to it, 
is doubtful. In all probability, such evidence of extreme unpopularity of 
the regime would be sufficient cause to lead the King to demand the 
Prime Minister’s resignation. This might lead to an appeal to force, 
or to — but why pursue further such purely speculative eventualities ! 

Sooner or later the Issue will have to be faced between authority from 
below and authority from above, between syndical organization and 
fascist hierarchy, between some form of democracy and some form of 
dictatorship. 

But this issue will arise within the syndicates as well as between the 
syndicates and the bureaucracy. For at present it is difficult to tdl 
whether the internal structure of the syndicates is democratic or not. 
In their origin and general spirit the syndicates are highly bureaucratic. 
The whole movement was directed from above by a few leaders who 



204 SYNDICAL DEMOCRACY OR FASCISM 

imposed their representatives on the local units. The important deci- 
sions and contracts are made by the great national confederations, and 
representation in these is very indirect. As we pointed out above, the 
national employers’ confederations are each autonomous, but the labor 
confederation of syndicates is highly centralized. The president of the 
confederation of syndicates is at the same time the president of each 
of the subordinated national federations, and the president has ex- 
tensive powers, such as naming his secretaries, appointing labor repre- 
sentatives for political bodies, fixing labor conditions for the employees 
of the federations, and being responsible for the whole administration of 
all the federations. This implies a highly centralized administrative 
bureaucracy, and there is no doubt that Rossoni’s aim is to extend his 
power until he becomes virtually a labor boss. 

On the other hand, according to the new constitutions in all the con- 
federations, employers’ as w^ell as workers’, the president is elected by 
the Congress (or general council) or the federation, which is composed of 
representatives of the provincial congresses, which in turn are com- 
posed of representatives chosen by the members of the local syndicates. 
So that on paper, at least, the syndicates have representative govern- 
ment. Also the congress of the federation must approve the budgets 
and vote on all important issues, financial or others, which concern the 
federation. The president is appointed for three years (in some cases 
two years) and the congress must meet at least every two years. In 
addition the Confederation of Syndicates has a National Council, which 
includes representatives of the provincial federations and the executive 
directors, and this must meet at least once a year. 

Of course, according to the law, all elections and nominations are sub- 
ject to the approval of the government (the Minister of Corporations) 
and the Fascist Party can interfere with syndicalist procedure at any 
point and at any time. But this is fascist procedure, rather than syn- 
dical, and it has already been restricted somewhat by decree and the 
tendency is certainly not in the direction of arbitrary control by the 
government over the syndicate organizations. As a matter of fact, 
the government does not interfere unless there is serious financial dis- 
order or political insubordination among the officers. 

At present the Rossoni administration seems to enjoy unquestioned 
support and prestige, and a real test case of the workings of syndicate 
government remains for the future. So far as the syndicate constitu- 
tions go, the decisive power would rest with the mass of electors in the 
syndicates, but in practice and under the present regime the Italian 
government could have its way, if it chooses to interfere. But with the 
institution of an economic parliament the structure of the fascist govern- 



SYNDICAL DEMOCRACY OR FASCISM 205 

merit will undergo serious modification and a modification in the direc- 
tion of syndicate control. However, if the corporations, rather than the 
syndicates, become the organs of representation, as seems likely, neither 
the workers nor the employers will have any direct share in the election 
of parliament. 

In any case, it is already evident that the theory which accompanies 
these constitutional reforms is not democratic. For even those fascists 
who are most eager in urging a reform of representation do so not in the 
name of a return to democratic institutions, but in the name of carrying 
the fascist revolution to completion. Carlo Costamagna for example, 
one of the ablest of the legal theorists, claims that the fundamental im- 
port of these developments is to make the state genuinely sovereign, a 
true power. Potenza is the essence of the state, according to fascist 
doctrine. These reforms break down the supposed independence of the 
economic from the political order. The corporate state is simply the 
synthesis of the productive activities of the nation. He quotes with 
approval Mussolini’s statement to the effect that ^'with fascism the 
Italian people, over and above the grotesque lies of the conventional 
democr;^c and liberal suffrage, has become an internal part of the 
state.”/ That is to say, the state is sovereign, not because it represents 
the people, but because it is strong enough to control the whole life of the 
people. Or, as others put it, there is a vast difference between represen- 
tation of interests and representation of citizens. .The former does not 
imply a return to “that old electionism which still shows its head in 
several provinces,” but rather a consciousness and intelligent pursuit of 
interests. Before the talk of economic representation became current 
this intelligent pursuit of interests was conceived in terms of production. 
As we pointed out above, mere participation in production constitutes 
fascist citizenship- But now the theorists have gone further: they insist 
that the producer must in addition take an active and informed part 
in the life of his syndicate, and through it in the organized activities 
of the nation. A mentalita sindacde is needed, they say. 

Economic representation is therefore not to be conceived too demo- 
cratically, though it is of course more democratic than the earlier fascist 
doctrine. It may be that members of syndicates have the vote, but 
what makes the state really representative, is not this syndical suffrage 
but the government’s capacity to Interpret and coordinate the various 
economic interests in the nation. The fascist doctrine of representation!^ 
is more like Hobbes’ than Rousseau’s: the ruler “represents” the- 
people because he, so to speak, stands up for them. On the other hand, 
the fascist doctrine of sovereignty is more like Rousseau’s than like 

V. Especially the conduaon of hk Manuale M diritto corforatpuo iiaUano. 



2o6 syndical democracy or fascism 

Hobbes^, for according to the fascisti it is the organized people itself, 
and not their government, that is sovereign. Only it is not the aggregate 
of atomic citizens of Rousseau, but the hierarchy of associated pro- 
ducers, that constitutes the sovereign state. Or in other words, no man 
is a member of the state except in so far as he is part of an association 
which represents one of the interests of the nation. 

No one can fail to see that all this implies a profound change from 
the traditional basis on which the Italian people used to participate in 
political elections under the democratic liberal regime. The disrepute 
into which the ballot had fallen, the conviction that the bickerings and 
factions of the various political groups in the old Chamber were gro- 
tesque, the proven impotence In the face of the great concrete problems 
manifested by the Chamber elected on the basis of abstract popular will, 
do not suffice to kill parliamentarianism. Elections on the individualistic 
basis of the disinterested public have so long represented in Italy a kind 
of fascinating myth, that it is profitable to substitute for them another 
system, provided there has first been created in the country, that is, in 
the masses of voters, a firm consciousness and precise knowledge of the 
political representation which is embodied in the corporate organization 
of the state ” 

All this may be synthesized In the following political formula : the 
fascist revolution aims to transform, not to suppress, the basis of popular 
sovereignty.’^ 

In view of these developments it is impossible at present to pass a 
final judgment on the government of the corporate state. About all 
that can be said now with any assurance is that the organization has 
been built up by a bureaucracy and owes its success to autocratic means; 
that the democratic constitutions were drafted by the bureaucrats them- 
selves and were not won from them by popular pressure; that neither 
capital nor labor seriously objects to democracy within its own class 
since democracy, at least in Italy, was objected to by each class as an 
instrument of domination in the hands of the other; that neither syndi- 
calism nor fascism will change to an inter-class or political democracy 
overnight; and that there is no urgent call for a change in that direction. 

In any case, the stato fascista of the Fascist Party is being enlarged 
into the stato corporativo. Though the two are generally and loosely 
identified, some fascist writers go so far as to say that fascism was 
merely a violent prelude and necessary means to the introduction of na- 

Critica Faschta^ January 15, 1927, pp. 21, 22. 

^ Crfdat F^scista^ February i, 1927, p. 41. Bottai and the Critica Fasckta have 
cbampioiKd tMs neo-democratic tendency for some time. See for example, the issues 
of October 15, and November 1 and 15, 1926. 



THE STRONG STATE 


207 

tional syndicalism. At this, other and purer ” fascists are visibly discon- 
certed. In 1926 Mussolini was willing to say rather timidly to a foreign 
correspondent, for foreign consumption, that fascism is a dictatorship 
tending towards democracy.” In 1927, however, at the climax of his 
speech of May 26, he boldly announced to the world the creation of 
the powerful united state of Italy . . . and this state is expressed in an 
accentuated, organized, authoritarian democracy, in which democracy 
the people circulate freely.” This is, of course, confused language, but 
the mere fact that democratic terminology is used, marks a significant 
change. Whatever the language employed, however, the fact is clear, 
that the emphasis is rapidly shifting from the fascij the militia and the 
Party hierarchy, to the national hierarchy of syndicalist associations as 
the foundation of the regime and the essence of the fascist revolution. 
Back in March 1919, the date of the founding of the fasci, Mussolini did 
not think of founding syndicate organizations. But now he hails the 
new syndicalist law as the fascistissimo of all reforms. This implies, of 
course, neither a contradiction in theory, nor a violent change in prac- 
tice. It merely means that fascism is moving, is assuming a positive 
direction and laying the foundations of a presumably permanent reform. 
But it must be obvious to all that there is a vast difference between the 
syndicate confederations and the Fascist Party government, both in their 
philosophies and in their practical constitution. They may coexist for 
some time, without forcing the issue, but sooner or later these two his- 
torically opposed types of government will face each other and a “ higher 
synthesis ” will be difficult. 

In the meantime there is already practical evidence that the change 
from the fascist to the corporate state is more than a matter of theory. 
The all-comprehensive stato etico which was little less than a He and 
little more than a boast during the early years of the regime, is now be- 
coming visible in practice. Mussolini’s motto: “ Everything to the state, 
nothing against the state and nothing outside the state,” is still a distant 
ideal, but it is no longer a mere dream. An account of the practical 
achievements of fascism is beyond the scope of this book, but we may at 
least mention enough of the facts to illustrate the shift which has taken 
place from the individualism of the first year of the regime to the state- 
socialism of the present. 

In internal affairs Mussolini, in spite of his socialist training, had 
apparently never really thought in economic terms. His battles ” were 
either military or political or both. His foreign policy was clearly and 
predominantly conceived in terms of economic imperialism, economic 
treaties and economic rivalries. But, like the nationalists, he seemed 
really to believe that there was no economic basis for internal politics. 



2o8 


THE STRONG STATE 


It was not until the Matteotti crisis that he had taken internal politics 
seriously at all, and it took him almost a year after that co begin fighting 
the “ economic battle ” in earnest. 

In the summer of 1925 he discovered that Italy needed foreign loans 
if it wanted to save the lira. De Stefani had tried to get along without 
resorting to this expedient, for his doctrines told him that Italy’s sal- 
vation lay in her economic independence. His industrialist supporters 
were evidently not embarrassed when the lira went down still lower and 
certain speculators were positively pleased. The big financial interests, 
however, feared further inflation and the consumers feared higher prices. 
In any case, the government could not avoid responsibility for the situ- 
ation and was forced to find a way out. Even De Stefani had come to 
see the laissez faire was not the final word. Shortly after De Stefani’s 
resignation, Count Volpi, one of the big men in the Banca Commerciale, 
and famous as a shrewd bargainer, was appointed Minister of Finances 
and sent to America to settle the debt question and bring back a loan. 
This he did very promptly and skillfully. And ever since, with the sup- 
port of the Italian banking interests and with the occasional aid of 
Messrs, Mellon and Morgan, he has kept Italian finances well in hand. 
But in order to do so, the government had to exercise continually wider 
powers. Mussolini’s speech at Pesaro in which he promised to defend 
the lira “ to his last breath and to his last drop of blood ” was a spec- 
tacular symbol of the government’s decision to use all available means 
of control. The tactics of Count Volpi reached their culmination in a 
series of drastic acts: in a decree regulating certain operations of banks, 
in the loaning of government funds to hard-hit industries, and in direct 
intervention by the government in the control of the exchange- The big 
internal Littorio Loan that was floated in 1926 was made prac- 
tically compulsory by the system of demanding licenses ” from all 
merchants and requiring a deposit of from five hundred to five thousand 
lire in Littorio Loan notes, presumably for '‘the protection of con- 
sumers against fraudulent merchants. The rapid deflation which fol- 
lowed these measures was carried out in direct opposition to the inter- 
ests and wishes of the industrialists. 

As a consequence of these financial measures the government was 
forced into price regulation as well. First, in order to keep prices from 
going up, then in order to force prices down after the deflation. Wages, 
rents, food prices, restaurant and retail shop prices were all forced 
down by the direct action of the government; sometimes by decree (as 
m the case of rents), sometimes by action of party officials and prefects 
(as in the case of reduction of agricultural wages), and sometimes by 
decision of the syndicate confederations (as in the case of most retail 



THE STRONG STATE 


209 

price regulations and wage reductions). The decree reducing rents was 
apparently the most drastic, involving in many cases reductions of over 
Mty per cent; and more than one landlord was sent to the islands for a 
period of years because he resisted or spoke ill of the decree. The task 
of such detailed regulation became so overwhelming and its current 
execution was felt as so chaotic and fragmentary that Mussolini in 
July 1927 signed a decree instituting a standing “ Corporate Committee 
for action on matters of prices, costs, and salaries,” under the Ministry 
of Corporations, which was charged with the enormous task of going at 
the whole problem systematically. The committee is largely made up of 
representatives from the various ministries and is empowered to under- 
take a “ gradual, unitary and methodical ” development of corporate 
action.” If really carried out, this will mean a further, much further, ex- 
tension of direct government control in matters which the syndical 
organizations have hitherto regarded as their prerogatives. 

Meanwhile the effects of collective labor contracts are making them- 
selves felt. Rossoni had succeeded in getting a decree (January ii, 
1927) which permits the nine-hour day (decreed in the summer of 
1926 as a temporary emergency measure) only if it Is granted by a 
collective contract made between legally recognized syndicates. This 
practically restores the eight-hour day, for Rossoni’s attitude in its favor 
is well known and Is evident in his draft for the Labor Charter, and 
though the Charter finally omitted mention of It and other fixed “ ob- 
sessions,” employers will be unable to force a nine-hour concession 
unless in very exceptional circumstances. 

In general, by his collective contracts, Rossoni has been able to gain 
concessions for labor, which though small are steady and of practical 
financial value to the workers. Labor has never had much bargaining 
power in Italy and hitherto local labor contracts have been variable and 
too dependent on the good will or political power of the local contracting 
parties. The early collective contracts also suffered from these condi- 
tions, but now the majority of contracts, made under the auspices of 
the Confederation of Syndicates, show a marked improvement. During 
the inflation they contained provisions for slight wage Increases, called 

high cost of living compensation,” and In the cases of industries which 
were hard hit by the economic crisis they have at least prevented a 
wholesale reduction of the wage scale. As a result of deflation the high 
cost of living compensations have been discontinued and wage reduc- 
tions accepted. But no reductions can be made until the contracts are 
revised and Rossoni is holding out as long as possible on his contracts, 
demanding that prices be reduced first. Meanwhile the government Is 
v. GerarcMa, November 1926, p. 707. 



210 


THE STRONG STATE 

taking various measures to combat the high cost of livings forcing rents 
and prices down by decree.®® Consequently the employers more than 
labor are feeling the immediate pinch of deflation. Eventually wages 
will probably drop even more than prices, since deflation has brought 
on hard times for Italian industry in general. The Confederation of 
Industry’s demand for wage reductions has been accepted as inevit- 
able; it is certain however that but for Rossoni’s organization and the 
collective contracts, labor would have been exploited ruthlessly by em- 
ployers. In general there can be no doubt that within the last year, 
since Rossoni has made his power felt, Italian workers have been less at 
the mercy of their employers than they were during the early days of 
fascism; and it is probable that they are protected more than they would 
have been by independent labor organizations. Indeed in the recent 
economic crisis the protests against the government have come from 
employers rather than from laborers and the government has gained 
enormously in the confidence of large groups of formerly hostile labor 
elements. It is no longer possible to accuse fascism of being an out and 
out bourgeois reaction. 

No doubt these practical achievements had something to do with the 
fact that In 1927 Rossoni at last won his seat at the International 
Bureau of Labor at Geneva, which had hitherto been denied him. 

The most significant development of fascist economic organization has 
taken place in the field of agriculture. To Mussolini’s own mind the 
building up of agriculture is the key to Italy’s economic salvation. He 
has become an enthusiast for agriculture in general and is using his 
personal prestige in every possible way to build up what Turati calls 

ruralism ” rather than agrarianism,” that is, a passionate love for 
the land and a scientific devotion to agricultural professions rather 
than mere interest in making profits off of landed property, which is 
characteristic of the agrarian capitalists. Mussolini has moral and 
political as well as economic reasons for his ruralism, but the economic 
reasons are fundamental. He thinks Italy’s only chance to make itself 
economically independent is to increase its agricultural output. Above 
all he wants to eliminate as soon as possible all. importation of grain. 
For if Italy could stop importing grain, about half its annual commercial 
deficit would be overcome. He restored the protective tariff bars on 
agricultural importation which De Stefani had let down. He Instituted 
the battle of wheat,” whose symbol Is the reinstitution of war bread 

In extreme cases the government is even forcing factories to keep on running 
though at a by the threat to take them over and run them under government 
management at the owner^s expense. 

See Appendix No. 25. 



THE STRONG STATE 


2II 


and which consists in encouraging by all possible pressure a masimum 
production 'per acre and an efficient consumption. Fairs, prizes, com- 
petitions, and advertisements have been instituted to stimulate agricul- 
tural effort, and numerous decrees have been issued to compel scientific 
cultivation — the use of proper machines and manures, rotation of 
crops, selection of seeds, etc. Recently Mussolini has even threatened 
to cut down the acreage of vineyards in favor of wheat. 

Land tenure, too, has been reformed. At first fascist tactics were to 
increase small holdings. Big estates were divided and sold on easy 
terms to peasants. But it was soon discovered that these peasants were 
so thrifty in their effort to pay for their farms, that they threw many 
farm laborers out of work. Consequently the outright selling of land 
was abandoned in favor of colonial ” share-holding tenant contracts. 
Another reason given in favor of the tenant plan is that by keeping 
ownership concentrated agricultural savings and capital could be con- 
trolled more easily and made more mobile. This is one of the prime 
efforts of fascism to encourage agricultural savings and to reinvest 
these in agricultural improvements. It is in this way that the govern- 
ment hopes gradually to pay for its huge investments in agricultural 
developments. These developments (drainage, aqueducts, etc.) are 
being carried on mostly in the south, where there are still extensive lands 
to be opened up to cultivation, but they are financed by northern capital. 
The general scheme is to build up future agricultural wealth in the south 
by Investing northern capital, industry and engineering in agricultural 
improvement. This is, to be sure, not an original invention of the fascisti, 
but a policy of long standing. W hat j the fascisti inve nted immedi ately 
after their accession to power was to taEelEeTunds which had been 
accumulated and appropriated by prexrious -regimes for public works 
under government management, and to turn them over to private 
conrpaiiies. This was thought to be both good business and"""g56d 
politics. The northern industrialists were satisfied by fat contracts 
and the southern agriculturalists by the huge appropriations for the 
development of the south. Furthermore it was in line with the 
fascist theory of “ rescuing at least one principle from the general 
shipwreck of liberalism — th^of individual initiative/^ But during 
the last few years these ^^iSdlviduaTTf^^ been in- 

creasingly subjected to more careful government supervision until now, 
with the new syndicate machinery, It is difficult to find the line between 
private and public management.®® The truth is that here as in other 

The agricultural reform of for whicii Serpieri is largely responsible, is 

another step away from individualism and marks the beginnings of a systematic 
political control of land tenure, ^pedally of the large southern estates. 



212 


THE STRONG STATE 

fields the government has been forced out of its individualism by the 
course of events, so that practically all so-called private enterprise is 
now subject to minute government control. 

These are a few illustrations of the revolutionary changes which are 
under way and which are transforming the fascist state into a single 
national, centralized workshop. It is idle to argue whether the state has 
been turned over to economic interests or the interests subjected to the 
state. The right wing of the Party insists that the corporate state is a 
glorified individualism; the left wing thinks it to be the triumph of the 
people “ over the threatened capitalist insurrection.” The simple fact 
is that the political and the economic orders are being fused into the cor- 
porate state and government is frankly becoming political economy. 

The official justification for this kind of a state is not made in terms 
of these internal class distinctions, but rather in terms of Italy's inter- 
national relations. The new order is regarded as an iron necessity im- 
posed upon the nation by its poverty. “ The economic struggle between 
nations,” said Mussolini, ^^is becoming more severe and pitiless than 
the military struggle between these same nations. We dare not believe 
in an attenuation of this phenomenon. No. We must take cognizance 
of this fact: that life is becoming harder; it is not more comfortable, 
not easier for anybody.” Especially for Italy the struggle is relentless. 
Its lack of industrial raw materials and capital must be paid for in 
terms of hard work and a super-efficient organization of the nation. 

Italy is in a permanent state of war,” said Mussolini on another oc- 
casion; and these “ battles ” of the lira and of wheat are not metaphori- 
cal. Hence the appeal for economic organization and discipline to the 
nth degree is made not in the name of a revolutionary paradise but of 
national necessity. Imagine a Liberty Loan poster that would read:* 

Subscribe to the Loan and you and your children will enjoy the serenity 
of labor!” Yet that is precisely the appeal made during the recent 
loan drive.^® The Italian must fight not for happiness, for leisure, for 
liberty, but for work. Unemployment is not as serious now as it was 
immediately after the war, but it is still a constant nightmare to the 
Italian nation. Everybody knows that in some way or other work musti 
be found for four hundred thousand more Italians every year. 

Fatica senza faticaF 

The establishment of the corporate state sets the stage for more 
theories. For now that fascism is taking this positive direction many 

Mussolini: speech of July S, 1^26, 

^ One of the official loan movies outdid the irony of the poster just cited. It 
pictured the sweet fruits of saving by the honey which the bees industriously stored 
up and wMck the farmer carried off^ 




bUNL^ bUUIAlulblb ilAFLAliN 213 

who formerly saw in it nothing but the devil incarnate are beginning to 
understand the mysterious ways of Providence. And it is possible that 
before long both Hegelian and Marxian philosophers will discover that 
syndicalism is the middle term by which socialism and fascism have been 
joined in higher dialectic unity. Already certain socialists are revising 
their philosophy sufficiently to prove that fascism is but a necessary 
stage in the realization of the socialist state. Perhaps, they are suggest- 
ing, fascism is but socialism’s logical antithesis, which is soon to be re- 
solved into the higher state in which both will be reconciled. 

As early as 1923 the veteran Professor Labriola wrote: ^^In the ab- 
stract, fascism is just as likely to turn Into a national socialism as into a 
system of capitalistic hierarchies and rigid class subordination.” And 
certain socialists began to remark that an intransigent opposition to 
fascism was too bourgeois, that therefore socialism would do better to en- 
courage fascism to become a higher socialism. D’Aragona and other 
socialists had made overtures In the early stages of fascist syndicalism, 
but were repulsed by Farinacci.^- On February 2, 1927, however, several 
ex-directors of the reformlk C. G. L. published a manifesto in which this 
theory was outlined, and the proposal was made that they would be glad 
to develop it still more by means of an independent associated center 
of cultural assistance,” if the government were willing. 

Their thesis is that socialism has at last outgrown its infancy. The 
early stage of opposition between states and syndicates is a sign of im- 
maturity on the part of socialism and of senility on the part of the bour- 
geois state. As soon as “ the historical process ” had given syndicalism 
sufficient Inherent force neither it nor the state could fail to take cogni- 
zance of each other. The aged bourgeois state (the legal state) killed 
itself because it ignored the syndical power (the factual state), but 
the new state finally embraces the syndicates and the union proves pro- 
ductive. In the meantime syndicalism has outgrown its romantic dream 
of collectivism and its infantile a priorij unilateral classism,” and is 
willing to face reality. 

“ The fascist regime is a reality and this reality is to be taken into 
account. This reality moreover has taken its rise from our own princi- 
ples which have imposed themselves upon it. . . . The fascist regime 
has performed an arduous task in its law disciplining collective labor 
relations. In this law we see that principles are being acclaimed which 

A. Labriola: Le due foUtiche: fascismo e Hformssmo* 

For an account of the attitudes of various parties toward fascist syndicalism 
in 1925, see V. Ambrosini: La battaglia fer lo stato mdacaU, It also contains inter- 
esting evidence showing that the Aventine liberals were much more disconcerted by this 
trend of fascism than were the socialists. 



214 SOME SOCIALISTS EXPLAIN 

have always been ours. So long as the liberal state lasted, and on. the 
other hand, so long as the workers remained firm in their misconception 
of the state, a law like the one now passed was unthinkable. The fascist 
revolution has cut the Gordian knot, and we must act upon this fact. 
. . . Therefore, to begin with, no opposition to these reforms.” 

Accordingly these men declared themselves willing to place at the 
service of the national commonality ” their patrimony of experience ” 
in the workers' militia ” by virtue of which they had acquired special 
aptitude in understanding social problems and in making them accessible 
to the masses.” At this the fascist labor press, which had in fact ex- 
tended the invitation, set up a cry of rejoicing, as if the prodigal son had 
returned, and were to be received with open arms ; while the more con- 
servative press (e.g, Forges-Davanzati in the Tribuna) said ^Mon't get 
excited and don't exaggerate.” The official bulletin of the fascist party 
(February 7) called the document a mere confusion of guilt and error, a 
tardy recognition of what was obvious to the whole world, and hence 
a declaration of which only anti-fascists need take account. 

After the publication of the Labor Charter a number of favorable 
comments were heard from socialist quarters, notably from Pio Gar- 
denghi, an ex-editor of Avanti, who is reported to have said: “ Fascism 
has definitely and victoriously ended the fight which was begun by 
socialism.” 

Such ideas will probably grow in the near future, if some of the old 
professors are spared a while longer. Q[t is therefore by no means im- 
possible that socialism and syndicalism will once more be reconciled to 
each other and both to the fascist state, but — it Is difficult to say which 
has converted which. 



Chapter V 


FASCIST CULTURE 
L Fascism and Culture 

During the congress held at Bologna in March 1925, at which the 
fascisti laid the foundations for their National Institute of Culture^ 
an issue arose which puts the whole problem of fascist culture in a clear 
light. Panunzio, representing the point of view of one large group^ said: 

We fascisti need a definite doctrine/^ and he proposed that the congress 
lay the foundations of fascist philosophy, fascist art, fascist morals, in 
short fascist culture. To this Gentile replied, “ No. What we need is 
not to bring culture into the realm of fascism, but to bring fascism into 
the realm of culture.’^ ^ This difference in point of view still persists. 
The fascisti are still wondering whether they want to be civilized in their 
own peculiar way, or whether they are content to be just civilized. Of 
course, the alternative is not absolute; they may be both. But practically 
speaking it makes a considerable difference where the emphasis falls. 
One group of fascisti wants to make fascism the final end and subject- 
matter of its culture, to talk about little else. Another group wants to 
make fascism a means for promoting culture, universally conceived. 
Gentile, who is President of the Institute had his way at least on paper, 
for the organization is called The National Fascist Institute of Culture, 
and not the National Institute of Fascist Culture, as was first proposed; 
but whether his point of view has really gained the ascendancy is 
doubtful. So-called fascist culture is still largely a celebration of fas- 
cism. However, now that there is no opposition culture left to stimulate 
fascist propaganda, the celebration is becoming a bit tedious, and what 
is more, the books will not sell, presumably because of high prices. 
Consequently, for economic reasons, if for no others, the intellectually 
minded fascisti must settle down to more serious work. 

There seems to be general agreement that fascism must now develop 
a cultural side. A movement so original, so powerful and so creative, 
they say, can not possibly remain merely political and economic. It 
^ Gentile: CAe cosa e U fasdsmo^ pp. 99, 105. 



2i6 the catholic ITALIAN PEOPLE 

showed its negative side first, to be sure, because it had to. For in order 
to gain as great a momentum as possible in the negative task of over- 
throwing a worn-out regime, it had to concentrate on physical problems 
and on a bare minimum of ideas. The forces of fascism were intellec- 
tually too heterogeneous to permit any semblance of unity. Even after 
the Aiarch on Rome an over-emphasis on rival doctrines almost ruined 
the regime. But now that fascism feels secure, it is ready to look after 
its ideology and its art. Mussolini gave the signal for this cultural phase 
by his libro e moschetto^ fascista perfetto.^^ 


^ Fascist Keligton 

Culturally, if not politically, fascism^s strongest rival is the Catholic 
Church. No secular force of any kind has ever begun to compete with 
the Church in controlling the daily life and imagination of the Italian 
people. For centuries the Church has impinged on every aspect of 
Italian social and private life. We need say nothing of the long periods 
during which the Church was also the State in many of the Italian 
provinces. Its control is much more direct and powerful than any 
political control can be. The whole intellectual frame-work of life is 
supplied by the Church. The supernatural world above this perishable 
material world, the salvation of the soul from the bonds of the flesh, 
the protection by the saints against disease, misfortune and death, the 
divine favor and intercession of the Virgin in all the personal issues of 
domestic and agricultural life, the religious care of the happiness of the 
members of the family both living and dead, these are the fundamental 
themes which still dominate the minds of the vast majority of Italians. 
This theological world dominates not merely In the sense that it is 
believed implicitly, but in the more practical sense that its moral tech- 
nique is familiar. Divine protection and punishment are much more 
real and more conspicuous than their modern political equivalents. For 
every peasant and every child knows exactly how to govern himself 
according to divine law. The rather simple, at least intellectually simple, 
technique of penitence, confession, absolution, alms, indulgences, prayer 
and worship constitute the moral life of the people. 

What is politically even more important is that the Church has organ- 
ized public life and social functions around this moral world. The cal- 
endar is made by the Church, and even the daily routine is governed by 
the ringing of the church bell. The Church takes the place of theatre, 
opera and city hall. In addition to the imposing gilt, the lights and 
shadows and the sacred images which fill the churches, and in addition 
to the daily miracle of the mass, the Church has supplied abundant holi- 



THE FASCIST ATTACK 


217 

days and feasts, when the whole community gathers to celebrate the 
season. Cardinals and bishops, gay silks and velvets and brocades, gold 
and silver, candles and torches, fireworks and rubber balloons, confec- 
tions and drinks ! If you can imagine how a combined Christmas, New 
Year’s Eve, County Fair, and Fourth of July (old style) would affect 
an American boy’s mind and body, you may approximate a sense of the 
power which these celebrations have in an Italian community. And this 
happens not once a year, nor for miscellaneous political reasons, but with 
every season of the calendar and in celebration of some vital theme in 
the moral life of the individual and in the traditions of the Church. Add 
to this the treasure of art which centers in the Church, the intellectual and 
social prestige which it enjoys, its numerous charitable and educational 
institutions, its systematic care of the deceased, and you may under- 
stand why the Church has more of a hold on the masses than has the 
state. 

In comparison the Italian state is hopelessly bare and empty. Being 
of recent date, headed by a half French royal house and conducted by 
a very prosaic Parliament, having only occasional military celebrations 
and still more occasional visits of the King to make it impressive, repre- 
sented continually by boyish policemen, petty officials and busy tax- 
collectors, it Is comparatively quite remote and unattractive. Ever since 
the invention of expensive armaments, the Church costs less than the 
state, and yet offers infinitely more: festivals in this life and salvation 
in the next. 

Hence the state has no chance whatsoever with the masses. Among 
the bourgeoisie, of course, all this is different. Corrupted by rational- 
ism, indifferent to sensual display, or else given over to secular forms of 
sensuality and sensuousness, less worried about its sins, more worried 
about its prosperity, the bourgeoisie has turned to the state. Religion 
for the masses, politics for the rich — that is the traditional compromise. 

A Sicilian priest named Don Sturzo upset it. In 1918 he got the idea 
of capitalizing the Church for political purposes, or politics for Church 
purposes — it is hard to tell which. He met the initial opposition of the 
Pope, who saw no reason why he should soil his hands on the state. 
But Don Sturzo persisted and soon persuaded the Pope by a few prac- 
tical experiments. The result was that within two or three years Don 
Sturzo and his Popular Party succeeded in completely ruining Italian 
politics. All through the spring and summer of 1922, the veteran bour- 
geois statesmen tried to dislodge the Sidlian priest from his dictator- 
ship.’^ But it was useless; the old game was up. 

At first fascism tried to take the Church by storm. Born in the years 
of bolshevist revolt, when even the industrial proletariat had temporarily 



2i8 new friends in AN OLD HARMONY 

turned anti-clerical, fascism hoped to gain general favor by a violent 
attack.^ The futurist wing of the movement was naturally a sworn foe 
to this most " passe4st of all Institutions. The ex-socialists, like Mus-- 
solini, were also anti-religious, as well as anti-clerical. The bourgeois lib- 
erals and republicans who joined the fascist ranks were the traditional 
political foes of the Church. Hence during the first year or two of the 
movement the fascist program was violently anti-clerical. As late as 
April 3, 1921, Mussolini spoke at Bologna as follows: “Fascism is the 
strongest of all the heresies that strike at the doors of the churches. 
Tell the priests, who are more or less whimpering old maids: away with 
these temples that are doomed to destruction 5 for our triumphant heresy 
is destined to Illuminate all brains and hearts. Make way for the 
youth of Italy, whose faith and passion are demanding expression.” 

Events soon forced fascism out of this position, two events especially: 
the evident strength of the Popularlst Party which no one seemed able 
to dislodge and the influx into fascism of the nationalists, who were 
modernist Catholics of the Action Frangaise type. Mussolini therefore 
suddenly turned his back on the futurists and anti-clericals, as he did on 
the republicans, and made his peace with the Church. He became a 
defender of the religious exercises of women and children who were 
being persecuted in their public worship by barbarous bolsheviks. He 
revived the Mazzinian formula Dio e popolo. He preached the doctrine 
of the synthesis of the two Romes. He supported Rocca’s position at 
the Fascist Congress in November 1921, to the eflfect that “it is neces- 
sary to have a dogma for social life: the dogma, namely, "that unity and 
power lay in Rome, in the Church there is the Catholic God, and in the 
modem State there is the Patriaf' Thus he finally persuaded the pop- 
ularists into a coalition. 

But when, shortly after his accession to power, the popularists aban- 
doned the regime, it looked as though the fascisti would be forced back 
into their former hostility to the church, and would have to declare 
open warfare. This would have been disastrous, of course. Instead they 
played a subtler, safer game. 

They came to terms directly with the Church and not via the Popular 
Party. Mussolini promised immediately on his accession to protect 
the Church and religion and this news was headlined in all the Church 
papers. The Pope adopted a benevolent attitude toward the “ fascist 
peace ” and the “ end of civil strife.” In December a Papal Encyclical 
came out as follows : “ Though the Church does not condemn the demo- 
cratic form of government, yet it is a well-known fact that this system of 
government is especially adapted to party strife.” Soon after, by the 
joint action of the Church and government, Don Sturzo was kicked out 



THE CATHOLIC STATE 219 

of politics, his local organizations and syndicates were destroyed, and 
in the 1924 elections the clergy were required by the Pope to maintain 
absolute neutrality. Thus the old compromise was reestablished: Re- 
ligion for the people and politics for the bourgeoisie, spiritual authority 
and temporal authority, a free church in a free state.” The Pope was 
as content with this arrangement as a prisoner of the Vatican ” might 
reasonably be expected to be, and was ready to go back to the old status 
he had enjoyed for several decades before the ambitious Sicilian priest 
had upset normalcy. 

Periodically the Vatican revives the customary pleas for temporal 
power, which are politely refused. In October 1926 the whole issue was 
gone over again by the Popolo d^Italia and the Osservatore Romano, 
without significant results. Again in March 1928 the Pope^s outspoken 
criticism of fascist education and the pro-fascist Catholic party, seemed 
to signalize an open breach between Church and state. But both sides 
immediately drew in their horns and negotiations on the old “ Roman 
Question” were re-opened. Neither side is very optimistic that any 
definite settlement will be reached shortly; both sides claim they can 
wait indefinitely. There were rumors that a general basis of accord 
had been found, involving an extension of the Vatican grounds and 
payment of a money indemnity (which the Pope has hitherto refused). 
Some say that the Pope would be satisfied with the temporal possession 
of enough territory to house himself and cardinals plus an outlet to 
the sea ” and that he would not insist on this last demand in the bar- 
gaining. Others say, and the remarks of Cardinal Merry del Val support 
this point of view, that the Church would renounce temporal power 
completely if it were given absolute spiritual power. 

This is of course inacceptable to the jascisti, for they too have their 
spiritual ambitions. They pose as the official representatives of the 
popolo d'ltalia. They want to have the first place in the affections and 
imaginations of the people. They want to be the embodiment, not 
merely of the Italian state, but of Italian culture. They want to be the 
Churches rival on its own ground. This raises a problem quite different 
from the old problem of Church and state. It is not primarily a political 
problem, but a cultural one. At first sight one would no doubt be in- 
clined to regard this ambition of the fascisti as sheer folly, doomed to 
defeat. But the progress which they have already made is remarkable, 
and Cardinal Gasparri may yet find that friend Mussolini is more than 
a match for him. 

Fascism gained its first victory over the Church by surrendering to 
Catholicism. Fascism is Catholic, absolutely Catholic; because the 
Italian nation is Catholic. Whatever is national must be fascist. If it be 



220 


THE CATHOLIC STATE 

objected that the Catholic Church is international; the fascist reply is 
that really it is Roman, imperial Other nations have embraced the 
Roman faith when it was brought to them; but Italy has produced it. 
It is at home in Italy, an importation elsewhere. The spread of the 
Roman Church is, therefore, a phase of Italy’s “ spiritual imperialism, a 
recognition on the part of other peoples of Italy s moral primacy. The 
Church is but the organized form of Italian religion. Hence tbc Italian 
state, far from renouncing affiliation with the Church, must recognize 
it, protect it, and incorporate it into the organic unity of the nation. 
The state itself must be religious, Catholic. This doctrine is two- 
edged. The state is spiritualized, but the Church is nationalized. And 
here’s the rub. The Church is cordially accepting the one half and dog- 
matically rejecting the other. Fascism insists on the whole of it. Not 
that It tries to subordinate spiritual authority to temporal Never! 
It denies the distinction. Church authority is just as ultimate in its 
sphere, as medical authority in its. But, since religion is only one 
phase of the life of the spirit, according to the idealist-fascist doctrine, 
and is really coordinate with science and art, it is not the independent 
ultimate good of life which the Church claims It to be; and since the whole 
life of the nation must be included in the stato etico^ it follows that re- 
ligion must be included as one part or phase of that organic, spiritual 
unity which finds its total embodiment in the state. To this the Church 
naturally objects. God, not the state, must be ultimate; and, as the 
Pope told Mussolini not long ago, the spiritual needs of man reach over 
and beyond the state, and hence the Church rejects fascist doctrine, 
though it accepts fascist politics. 

The idealistic philosophy of the state is naturally not an easy doctrine 
to foist upon the Church. Historically it has its roots in the protestant 
Hegel and its chief expression in the German Kultur-staat, against which 
the Church had already waged one KuUurkampf* Italian idealism too 
was an enemy to the Church from the first. “ It was,” In the character- 
istic words of Gentile, a Catholic movement in a critical way,” Its 
pantheism and its secular conception of the spirit and of religion itself, 
are obviously opposed to Church dogma. 

The uncritical Catholicism of the non-Gentilian fascisti is not much 
better. Their religious enthusiasm is too patriotic. One of them, for 
instance, writes: ‘^Our Country and Our Religion are two sentiments 
, . . which blend indissolubly. It is impossible to separate them.” ^ 
From this attitude it is altogether too easy to pass to the idea that 
fascism itself is a religion. In fact, precisely this is very generally main- 
tained. Usually not in a sense hostile to the Christian religion or the 


^ Mario Carli; Fascisma 217. 



RELiGiUUb Jb:DUUATlUJN 


Catholic Church, but in the sense that fascism takes the old i 
into itself, broadens it, vitalizes it, and transforms it into the religion c 
the future, in which God, Country and Duce become practically in- 
distinguishable. Such opportunistic Catholicism deceives neither the 
Church nor the educated public, but it gives the general impression 
among the masses that fascism is a defender of the faith, and it has 
enabled the government to persecute the Popular Party without giving 
the impression that it was persecuting the Church. 

The most serious application of the doctrine of the Catholic state is 
Gentile’s reform of public education. The public schools are to teach 
religion just as they teach anything else. The regular teachers do the 
teaching and regular text-books are prescribed. The Church may have 
the privilege of approving the text books, but otherwise it has no immedi- 
ate control in the matter. Furthermore, as a symbol of the new order, 
it is provided that a crucifix must be in every schoolroom as well as a 
picture of the King. This usually consists of a black and white print of 
the crucifixion by Raphael, framed in a simple wood frame and hung 
immediately under an enormous picture of the King. 

Religion in the schools was, of course, a severe shock to the anti- 
clericals. Both at home and abroad the general cry was raised that 
education had been turned over to the Church. But the Church knew 
better. For the reform put into effective practice precisely what alarmed 
the Church most, namely, the inclusion of religion into the secular life 
of the nation. The Church lost its monopoly and religion lost its pre- 
eminence. The new generation is growing up learning its religion not 
from the Church but from the state. 

Probably the most serious objection to the reform came from the 
teachers, who were now compelled to take examinations on the subject of 
religion, in order to retain their positions. The reader can perhaps 
imagine how religion is being taught by these overworked teachers. 
There is no excess of Christian zeal nor of familiarity with the subject- 
matter! It would be going too far to claim that the introduction of 
religion into the public schools is a first great step toward the irreliglon 
of the future, but this would be nearer the truth than the current 
supposition that the Church had been given a new lease on life. 

On the other hand, it may be still too early to predict. Gentile’s idea 
is to put religion on a broader, more libera! basis than the Church has 
been willing to do, and he is trying to induce fascism to be a genuinely 
religious movement, in his sense of religious — religious in a critical 
way.” Religion, as he says, is nothing but taking life seriously. He 
wants to liberate religion from Catholic dogma and Church authority, 
and expects his educational reform in particular and fascism in general 



RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 

EL Step in tliis direction. As one of his associates in the reform 
_im; “ If vre want to teach children religion, we must teach them a real 
and genuine religion, with its mythology, with its mythical personifica- 
tions, and with its dogmatic commandments. . . . To restore to the 
people a sense of the sacredness of life, we must have patience and return 
to our Christian tradition. . . . Though Christianity at a particular 
stage in its development has wrapped itself in a rigid theology, it does 
not cease to represent, to be sure in the form of myths, the essential 
revelation of the reality of the spirit. . . . We can and we must go 
beyond the limits of Catholic orthodoxy, but we can not remain ab- 
solutely indifferent to a faith and an Institution that represents the 
central nucleus of our national tradition.” ® 

But the great majority of the fascisti are quite ignorant of and in- 
different to this religious philosophy. They are willing to make their 
peace with the Church for political reasons, but they personally have 
no interest in giving fascism a religious flavor. Consequently, now that 
Gentile Is no longer in the government, his successors are adopting a 
more superficial policy. They are catering to the Church not only politi- 
cally but intelleaually as well. For example, at the International Con- 
gress of Moral Education, September 1926, Bodrero, formerly rector of 
the University of Padua, now the Under-secretary of Public Instruction, 
said: “The Italian national government holds that the only possible 
form of moral education is that established by the Gospel of Christ 
in the Catholic interpretation, tradition and teaching, from God’s ten 
commandments to the catechism.” The Church is reviving its institu- 
tions of higher learning and asserting its doctrines more freely. Re- 
cently it has attempted to dictate in matters of educational control, has 
protested against obnoxious professors, has banished text books (other 
than religious) from the schools and is regaining a little influence in the 
universities. Gentile immediately opposed these moves and publicly re- 
buked the responsible ministers for surrendering part of the authority 
which rightly belongs to the state. Thus it is possible, if politicians 
rather than educators should get control of the educational system, that 
the Church may succeed in reestablishing its intellectual respectability, 
and that neo-scholasticism rather than national idealism may become 
the official theology of the fascist faith. But for the present this hardly 
seems probable. For the reform of the schools is but one phase of the 
more general competidon between church and state to win the affec- 
tions of the people. 

Less subtle and more generally effective than this reform is the new 
fascist art of secular celebrations. It is not for nothing that fascism us 

* V. Balbino GialiaEko: La Folitica Schalastica dsl Gt^emo Naziomde, pp. 96-S. 



RIVAL SUITORS OF YOUTH 


223 

so ritualistic. The marches, salutes, yells, songs, uniforms, badges, 
and what not, are giving a new focus to the imagination of the Italian 
youth, are linking their social life to political organizations and are 
filling their minds with political — I will not say ideas, but political — 
feelings. This is perhaps the greatest of the fascist revolutions. Good 
Italian youths still go to mass and participate in religious festivities, 
but their sentiments, their imaginations, their moral ideals are centered 
elsewhere. 

Catholic rites are after all not very well adapted to the emotional 
needs of a healthy young man. There is little athleticism in the Chris- 
tian religion. College fraternities and college life,” the American 
equivalent for youthful religion, are missing in Italy. Hence fascism’s 
inventions in this field have supplied a real demand and captured with 
ease the enthusiasms of youth, with which the Church had been strug- 
gling for generations. 

The Church has made counter moves. It has supported Its Gioventit 
Cattolica, its young men’s organization, with exceptional vigor. During 
the winter of 1926 it staged a big international Catholic youth conven- 
tion and celebrated Saint Louis Gonzaga, the patron saint of youth, 
with great pomp and great display of his sacred skull. There are occa- 
sional conflicts between the Gioventu Cattolica and the fasci. After 
the 1924 elections and again after the last attempt on Mussolini’s life, the 
fascisti destroyed a number of the Gioventu Cattolica headquarters. 
This led to vigorous protests on the part of the Vatican, followed by the 
Pope’s gift of 500,000 lire to rebuild the destroyed buildings. Mussolini 
in turn condemned the attacks. Hereupon the Azione Cattolica pub- 
lished a warm praise of Mussolini, coupled with an equally warm expres- 
sion of the hope and confidence that violence against Catholic organiza- 
tions would cease. 

Fresh trouble, however, arose almost immediately out of the rivalry 
between the fascist Balllla and the Catholic Scouts. When boy scoutism 
was first introduced into Italy a few years ago, the Church was hostile. 
It thought the movement too materialistic; too much attention to the 
body and too little to the soul. But when the enormous power of the 
organization became evident, the Church took it under its wing and 
formed the Catholic Scouts. The movement continued to grow and 
promised to do precisely what the Church hoped it would, that is, give the 
Church a new grip on the social activities of the coming generation. 
When the fascisti organized their Balilla and Advance Guard, there 
was an open rivalry between the two juvenile movements, and conse- 
quently between church and state. The Catholic Scouts had been on 
the ground first and had that initial advantage, but the fascist organiza- 



224 SAINT FRANCIS AND MUSSOLINI 

tions were more vigorous and more spectacular. In December 1926 
the government suddenly ordered the Church to disband its Scouts in 
all the smaller villages and towns (where there was not room for the 
two organizations), and in return the fciscisti agreed to send their own 
organizations to the priest once a week for religious instruction. The 
Church complied with the demand, not “wishing to embarrass the 
regime,” but it did so with expressions of severe pain. 

In the spring of 1928, when the Church became involved in the German 
minorities dispute and when the Pope openly censured tie pro-fascist 
Catholic Party, Mussolini in reply abolished the remaining Catholic 
Scouts, that is, in the cities as well as the villages, and left the fascist 
Balilla and Avanguardia supreme. The Church is now left without any 
independent organizations by which it may lay hold on the future gener- 
ations of Italy. Here again, the state is winning out; henceforth the 
Church will have one hour a week, and a comparatively dull hour, in an 
organization that is molding both the minds and the bodies of future 
citizens.* 

Public feasts and celebrations play a comparatively large role in the 
social life of the Italian masses, and, as we pointed out above, these 
have been practically monopolized in the past by the Church, ^ut now 
the fascisti are making serious inroads. The Church gained a big initial 
lead with its Holy Year in 1925 and the institution of the Feast of 
Christ the King, which is celebrated in October but which really cul- 
minates on December thirty-first, when the Pope celebrates a “ royal 
mass ” and the cardinals formally do homage to him. The feast was 
first fixed in 1925 for the last Sunday in October, on the ground that it 
ought to come before All Saints’ Day. This put it in the midst of the 
annual fascist celebrations! Then it was changed to October 13, on 
which day the Pope received the delegates of the First Congress of 
Catholic Men, an organization which is as nearly political as a Catholic 
and non-fascist organization may well be. 

In 1926 the Church tried the same tactics with the Franciscan Year, 
celebrating the Seventh Centenary of the death of Saint Francis. But 
the fascisti put their fingers into the pie. It was pointed out loudly 
and often that Saint Francis is the big Italian saint — one of the chief 
glories of Italy. Notice, for instance, the follomng extracts from an 
official proclamation of the Centenary in the town of Prato: "... and 
the National Government, strong, free from all prejudices, sustainer of 

* Here and there the fasdsii threatened to suppress what little Y. M. C, A. there 

is m Italy because of its ^ Protestant and Masonic” characterj but after protests by 
tbe Anwrican Ambassador, it was spared on the ground that it was really an athletic 
institution. 



SAINT FRANCIS AND MUSSOLINI 225 

spiritual values, has done well to decree that the nation shall officially 
honor and exalt, with civic as well as religious ceremonies, our great 
Italian saint, perpetual teacher, to peoples and to individuals, of heroic 
discipline, of fervent toil, of gentle brotherliness. . , . May the saint 
of humility, and of peace bless our industries and our labors, illumine 
our minds and convert our hearts. Pax et bonum” 

In a similar vein throughout the year Saint Francis was capitalized as 
a national figure.^ It was repeatedly pointed out that though Christ 
was, of course, the original founder of Christianity and though the 
Church went back to ancient Rome, really modern Christianity was 
given its first great impetus in Italy by St. Francis. He is linked with 
Dante and Giotto as one of the great figures of the Italian Renaissance; 
not merely because his simple Italian verses became one of the founda- 
tions of modern Italian religious literature, but because his anti-intel- 
lectualistic, practical Christianity is preeminently Italian, an outgrowth 
of Italian social and economic conditions as well as an ideal pattern for 
the religious life of Italy in the future. “ And wherever in all the lands 
of all the continents there is today a splendor or humility of works 
achieved or suffered in the name of this Saint, there there Is a trace of 
our country.” ® 

The climax of the Franciscan celebration came on October 4, Saint 
Francis Day, with the celebration of a gorgeous pontifical mass at 
Assisi and a general gathering at the Franciscan shrine of pilgrims from 
all over Italy. In his address, the cardinal legate, Merry del Val, thanked 
the local administration for the cordial reception It had given him, said 
some kind words about the political officials who had cooperated in 
the celebration, and then spoke of Mussolini as of him who holds the 
reins of the Italian government, and who with a clear grasp of the 
real state of things continues in the resolve that religion be respected, 
honored, and practised. Visibly protected by God, he has raised again 
the fortunes of the nation by his wisdom, increasing its prestige before 
the whole world.” This was immediately played up far and wide 
in the secular press as a step towards the reconciliation of Church and 
state, and as a tribute by the Pope to fascism. 

The crowming stroke of the fascisti was to stage a big Mussolini 
celebration at Peru^a (a few miles from Assisi) on the following day, 
October 5. Public appearances of Mussolini are by this time as great 
events as public appearances of the Pope. And especially his com- 
ing to a hill town like Perugia was an event of extraordinary excitement 
for the whole of Umbria. The pretext for his appearance at that 

® V. Criiica PoUtica, October 192^, p. ff. 

® Mussolini in Ms Manifesto for the Franctein Centenary. 



226 FASCIST RELIGION IN THE MAKING 

time WAS thst lie h^d been invited to open tbe summer session for 
foreigners at the University of Perugia, but being unable to come at the 
time, he promised to deliver an “ academic lecture ” some time during 
the school term. It happened that October 5 was a convenient date 
for him (the summer session was over by that time and the winter ses- 
sion had not yet begun!) and it happened that the subject of his lecture 
was “ The Maritime Power of Ancient Rome.” Though the theme of 
the lecture created considerable escitement, the reading of it turned 
out to be a mere Incident in an all-day triumph. He harangued 
“faithful Umbria” in the piazza, — bands, parades, long lines of 
helmeted soldiers, long columns of standard-bearing fasci, gay street 
illuminations and a profusion of flags and banners made the celebration 
a rival to that of Assisi. The net effect of the whole performance, for 
the thousands who had gathered in that region from all over Italy, was 
to make it a two-day celebration — the first at Assisi, the second in 
Perugia; the first devoted to the great Italian Saint of the Roman church, 
and the second to the Duce of Imperial Rome re-arisen ! 

This sort of tactics has been continued. It frequently “ happens,” for 
instance, that in many of the provincial towns, Turati, the Secretary of 
the Fascist Party, finds himself scheduled to speak during the cele- 
brations of the patron saint’s day, which is usually the biggest day of 
the year. Pentecost has been made a national “ feast of flowers ” on 
which day the anti-tuberculosis society sells poppies. The posters ex- 
plain that the “ flowers symbolize the sacrifice made by the nation in 
war and disease.” The calendar, too, is assuming a secular structure: 
March 23rd, founding of the fasci, the feast of youth; April 21st, the 
founding of Rome, Labor Day; May 24th, the entry of Italy into the 
~var. Empire Day; September 20th, anniversary of capture of Rome and 
celebration of Italian unity; October 28th, anniversary of the March on 
Rome, celebration of the fascisti’s power by parades of its various 
organized forces; November 4th, a Victory celebration, and Ilth, the 
King’s birthday. These holidays are given elaborate advertisements and 
long expositions in the daily press. The Church holidays no doubt do not 
need press notices, but neither do they get them; whereas a political 
holiday always occupies the chief columns of every paper for several 
days before and after. Wall posters are an important traditional in- 
stitution in Italy in this connection; and in this art the fascisti are past* 
masters. Their red, white and green posters, with even more flamboyant 
“ messages ” printed on them, are a conspicuous feature in the landscape 
of every Italian town. 

^ Of the tracts, pamphlets and books which carry on this sort of propa- 
ganda, no account can be given here. There Is an abundance of such 



SAINT BENITO 


227 

literature and it goes to the most ridiculous extreme. There is^ for ex- 
ample, a fascist publisher who gets out occasional pamphlets celebrating 
various aspects of the new harmony between church and state, exalting 
the Catholic works of fascism and making it particularly plain that 
fascism and not the Popular Party is the true political champion of the 
Church. One of these pamphlets contains the parallel lives of Pius XI 
and Mussolini. Another one draws parallels between St. Francis and 
Mussolini, emphasizing in particular the Franciscan virtues of the 
DucCy patience in suffering, renunciations, exile, etc.; lastly there is an 
exposition of their “ common love for animals,” illustrated very con- 
vincingly by a reproduction on the left-hand page of Giotto’s St. 
Francis preaching to the birds, and on the opposite page a photo- 
graph of the Duce with derby hat and wing collar, laying a gloved hand 
on the back of his lioness In the zoo.*^ 

Recently a belief has grown up about Mussolini personally that repre- 
sents more than mere propaganda. His spectacular career makes it 
easy for many pious Italians to believe that he has literally been sent 
by God to save Italy. And now this belief is not only confirmed but 
practically established to be true by his miraculous escapes from the 
assassin’s hand. Here is the text of a typical wall poster after the 
attempt on Mussolini’s life in September 1926: 

Italy once more Is safe: Mussolini still holds it stronger, more 
beautiful, more glorious than ever ! 

Here is his order to us : 

NO REPRISALS 

No demonstration either civil or religious ! 

We must obey! 

Who fails to obey offends the Duce^ 

‘ Whom God has given and whom 

He now wants definitely to preserve intangible for the safety and 
the greatness of our Country. 

(signed) The Provincial Political Secretary 

Alezzini-Padua,” 

On the part of the writer this manifesto is no doubt rhetorical, but on 
the part of many a poor peasant (and many a city proletarian’s wife) 
these sentiments are quite genuine and express literally a religious 
conviction. And it is by no means impossible, unless relations between 
Church and state become too strained, that the Duce will some day figure 
as an Italian Joan of Arc, and that he will be known to posterity as St. 

^ V. Sac. Paolo ArdalPs imnphlets, Ediaoni Biladmo, Mantova. 



228 Fx4SCIST MYTH 

Benito. His life, in fact, reads not unlike that of many another saint and 

of miracles there already Is a plenty. 

It is more probable, however, that fascism will maintain its own list 
of martyrs and saints and continue to build up its own mythology. The 
elements of the new religion are already present in abundance.^ First 
of all, the fascisti lay much stress on their mysticism. Their political 
faith, they say, cannot be expressed In a consistent program, because 
it is mystical. Their love of violence is said to^be a mystical devotion 
to a new faith, and an immediate intuition of a profound truth, which 
they were unable to define until after they had acted upon their vision. 
Hence they regard themselves as men of faith, spiritual to the core, and 
it is one of their commonplaces that fascism has reestablished idealism 
in a world of skepticism, and has asserted the duty of fighting for tran- 
scendent values against the current doctrine of waging class conflicts to 
protect one’s own rights. Furthermore fascism has revived the primitive 
Christian joy of martyrdom. A true fascist thinks only of his duty, 
and regards any sacrifice which he may be called upon to make in the 
performance of it a privilege. This Is the inner driving force of the new 
religion. 

Thus fascism represents a religious revival. Not in that it proposes 
to found a new religion and develop Its own theology, but in that it has 
given to thousands of Italian youths an Ideal for which they are ready 
to sacrifice all. A number of fascisti have confessed to me, quite pri- 
vately, that they would not willingly die for their Christian faith, nor 
for democracy, nor for socialism, nor even for their King, but for Mus- 
solini? — gladly and unhesitatingly. They claim that fascism repre- 
sents more than merely one faith among many. They will not admit 
that the socialist “ martyrs ” are on an equally ideal plane; for, they say, 
in the first place, fascism has superseded other faiths, has won the 
allegiance of the very men who formerly professed less satisfying 
faiths; and, in the second place, it has made its appeal in the name of 
sacrifice to a transcendent, non-personal good, not in the name of class 
interests or salvation of one’s soul, or defense of one^s rights or any other 
selfish motive. After all a Christian martyr expected to wake up and 

reign forevermore,” and a bolshevist hero is driven by an unearthly 
hatred to seek vengeance on his oppressors, but a fascist asks for nothing 
more than to be the passing instrument of his nation^s greatness. 

Then there is the idea of the New Rome, which is supposed to be a 
synthesis of the Roman Empire and the Roman Catholic Church — a 
genuine spiritual synthesis, not a mere coalition. Theologically, of 

® Aa amusing, sacrilegious and of course unofRdal fascist parody on the Creed is 
re-printed in Ludovic Nadeau: Vltalie fasdste ou P mitre danger^ pp. 132-4- 



FASCIST MYTH 229 

course, this is quite preposterous; but it is an immediate, mystical union, 
a harmonizing of Christian and Roman virtues and aspirations. The 
physical counterpart of this spiritual union is the country of Italy 
itself, for on Italian soil pagan and Christian Rome have found a com- 
mon home. There is something supernatural about Italy; it is literally 
a divine country.® Ever since the days of Homer it has been a land to 
which men have looked forward. The Trojans, the Phoenicians, the 
Greeks, the Northern savages, all turned toward Italy. Italy has led 
Europe in the struggle for civilization; first it civilized and Christianized 
the barbarians, then it led medieval commerce, then the maritime con- 
quests and explorations, then the Renaissance, then modern astronomy 
and physical science, and now, lastly, it is leading the world to new 
levels of social and political organization. Obviously Italy is the light 
of the world, Italy not only enjoys spiritual autonomy and cultural 
primacy more than any other country, but it breaks the way which 
others follow; it has a world-wide spiritual empire. 

This Italian outline of history leads to a spiritualized conception of 
imperialism, which is something more than either the Catholicism of the 
Church or the political power of Rome. It is a genuine fusion of the 
mastering qualities of the race. It surpasses political and economic 
expansion, for these are merely its material expressions; it is the 
majestic career of genius, which extends its sway not by physical 
force, but by the power of its inner superiority, which inevitably com- 
mands recognition and admiration. This cult of the New Rome is ad- 
mittedly a myth in the Sorelian sense, whose value lies not in its 
literal truth, but in its power to command obedience, devotion and 
sacrifice. 

If other nations can command similar disinterested loyality on the 
part of their citizens, well and good. Nothing would seem to a fascist 
more in conformity with the logic of history than that other nations 
.should follow in the path which Italy has taken. It is infinitely better 
that each people should frankly assert its faith, than that they should 
oppress each other in the name of liberty, impose themselves on each 
other in the name of equality, and fight each other in the name of inter- 
national fraternity. 

There is only one internationalism that is morally possible, since 
it does not exclude but sanctions renunciation and sacrifice, namely 
that which aims not at happiness on earth but in the beyond: religious 
internationalism. Hence the only International that has a right and a 
duty to exist is Catholicism, that is, Christianity. This, in fact, still ex- 
ists and has endured for so many centuries because in asserting the in- 
® V. Giacomo Etna: La Mvbmta In U for Angnst 19x6, pp. 7-8. 



ANTI-PHILOSOPHY 


230 

timate brotherhood of all men in charity, in the face of God, it does not 
.deny but rather it asserts the duty of men In so far as they live on 
.earth to adhere to and to serve each his own nation; not out of hatred 
for the foreigner, for he too is a brother in Christ, but out of a duty 
which unites both though on opposite sides In a common holocaust of the 
individual, to a cause which transcends him. And so Catholicism in 
spite of its intrinsic spiritual universalism is, can be, and must be the 
national religion of each Catholic nation. 

“ For the end of man on earth is not to live blessed and Inert In a 
paradise of identity of all men, which would make life unworthy of being 
lived; rather it is to dedicate himself as an Individual to the triumph 
of those national values which history entrusts to him for the sake of the 
progress of human civilization.” 

As a symbol of this spiritual synthesis, several months ago a big 
wooden cross was restored in the Colosseum. The cross had been 
put there after Rome became Christian and had remained there until 
.the Garibaldists removed it after the capture of Rome in 1870. The 
reinstatement took place in the presence of the Queen, of cardinals and 
of fascistij and during the ceremony five hundred white doves were 
released from the cells in which the Christians had suffered martyrdom. 
.Perhaps the dove really hovers over the old wooden cross, perhaps the 
jsouls of the martyrs bear willing witness to their modern comrades, 
perhaps the black shirts in the Colosseum frighten even the pigeons 
.and owls that inhabit its crumbling walls, or perhaps the ancient 
Roman arena is once more being opened up to religious sport. In any 
case a synthesis of cross and Colosseum Is not even architecturally pos- 
.sible and time will tell whether the cross has been overshadowed by the 
arena or whether the arena has been turned into a Christian cemetery. 

HI. Fascist Intellect 

To the common charge, You have no philosophy,” the fascisti have 
two stock replies: the one, “ We are proud of It,” and the other, Our 
philosophy can be expressed only by deeds.” These two statements are 
not mere evasions, but sum up the two fundamental strains of fascist ide- 
ology. The former links up fascism with a more general movement of in- 
tdlectual revolt and the latter indicates fascism’s particular brand of 
idealism. 

Rttearches on the philosophical forerunners of fascism are still con- 
tinuing acdvdy, and every now and then Mussolim discovers a new 

FraiK^e^o Ercok: It dd Namonalismo^ la P^lkica^ Vol. XI, 

19*2, pp. i93-2ig. 



SIGNS OF REVOLT 


231 

teacher’^ of his. On the list at present are: Machiavellij Mazziniy 
Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Stirner, William James, Georges Sorel, Blan- 
qui, Pareto, Oriani, and perhaps others. This means (and this is about 
all it means) that Mussolini admires philosophies of revolt and that he 
regards fascism as the bursting into action of an intellectual ferment of 
long standing. 

The intellectualism against which fascism claims to be a revolt is 
difficult to define but easy to feel. The combination of French positivism 
and German Kantianism to say nothing of the Church scholasticism 
that leaked into the secular universities, had produced a wealth of 
verbiage and academic Intellectual machinery. It was all the more 
artificial because its problems were frequently as foreign as its termi- 
nology. On top of this came the elaborate Marxian Ideology, which 
having become a respectable tradition was worked to death as an Intel- 
lectual system quite apart from its practical utility. Every event 
of past or current history had to be worked into the meshes of some 
grandiose system of “ social laws ’’ or the logic of history.” It made 
little difference whether positivistic, socialistic, or idealistic “ laws ” were 
used, the net effect was to rationalize everything. The practical Impli- 
cations of this sort of study seemed to be a disinterested fatalism, 
an “ I told you so ” attitude. Whatever happened could easily be ex- 
plained by every champion of his own neat system. Or as Gentile puts 
it, scholars were content to stand looking out of their windows, explain- 
ing carefully everything they saw, but it never occurred to them to go 
.down into the street and take a hand in anything. The systems were 
ends in themselves. They led nowhere and could not serve as prac- 
tical programs. By them everything could be explained but nothing 
predicted. 

Among the early revolters against this type of culture, the case 
of Oriani may be worth special attention, not because of his importance 
but because he is probably unknown to the reader. Alfredo Oriani 
wrote extensively in the decades preceding the war and enjoyed a small 
circle of admirers in Romagna, but he would no doubt have been 
buried forever had not Mussolini recently discovered and resurrected 
him. In 1925 Mussolini made a pilgrimage to the Oriani home- 
stead and in 1926 sponsored a complete edition of his works, 
and announced him as a leading precursor of fascism. Mussolini 
said of him: ^^The politics of materialism and positivism reigned 
triumphant in lecture room and press; in all parties and minds the 
Italian spirit was in a state of torpor; it was then that Alfredo Oriani 
threw at the Italian masses his volume * The Ideal Revolt,* in which all 
the problems, the passions, the anxieties and the hopes of our times 



SIGNS OF REVOLT 


232 

are set forth, illustrated, in a concise style worthy of Tacitus, which 
alone would have sufficed to bring greatness to a writer. On these pages 
we have fed and we regard Alfredo Oriani as a poet who sang of our 
countr}3 as an anticipator of fascism, as an exalter of Italian energies.” 
This is greatly exaggerated of course. Oriani was one of those typical 
sad, lonely, looking-for-the-dawn, would-be aristocrats. He revolted 
against the deadening, levelling tendencies of democracy, socialism and 
the orthodox church. He had a vague faith in the renewal of the civil- 
izing forces of the family, the state and Christianity and he preached 
the dawn of a greater Italy. In this he resembled the fascistL On the 
other hand, he opposed war, imperialism, syndicalism and many of the 
concrete political tendencies of fascism, and he was a fervent, though 
confused, champion of liberty and individualism. He has been singled 
out as a prophet of fascism not for his doctrine, but for his temperament 
— his note of intellectual revolt. 

The same is true of other literary figures whom the fascisti claim as 
progenitors: Misslroli, Papini, the Vocists,” d’Annunzio. There was 
no unity of purpose nor ideas among these men. In fact, there was 
frequently bitter hostility, as in the case of Papini and d’Annunzio. 
But they were all revolters; and though they had no common positive 
goal, they had two common foes: one, the dominant intellectual con- 
ventionality and stagnation of the time, and the other, the foreign, 
especially German, cultural domination of Italy. Papini, to take but 
one example, in his disgust with the reigning formalism in philosophy 
and the lack of originality in literature, roamed all over the world in 
search of a new gospel. He went to the Encyclopedists, to Nietzsche, to 
pragmatism, to futurism — until his health broke down. During his 
convalescence he fell in love with his own dear Tuscany,” settled 
down to being a Christian and then wrote a life of Christ in the manner 
and spirit of a good Florentine, who had shaken off all German higher 
criticism and returned to the classic tradition of Italian art. 

The idealist movement in philosophy, which was one of the most 
important factors in the Germanizing of Italian intellectual life, and 
which started out as a revolt against Catholic Authoritarianism, has 
turned into a revolt against German academic systems, and a defense 
of itdiamta* Croce himself, says Gentile, is a fascist in spite of him- 
self, for in spite of his Hegelian foundations he, more than any other 
single scholar, has revivified the Italian tradition and contributed by his 
historical researches to the development of Italian stoicismo. So that 
even in his hands and still more so in the hands of his Vocist ” disciples 
the idealistic traditionalism has become a movement of revolt against 
Muwolini in Preface to Oriani : Rwalta Ideale. 



FUTURIST REVOLT 


233 

the French and German philosophical systems and methods of education 
which had lodged themselves in the schools and universities. 

A much more virulent revolt came from the futurists. Here is a 
specimen from Marinetti; 

On the fagades of museums, academies, libraries, and universities, we 
ought to read the following infamous principles written with the plaster 
of imbecility: 

You no longer think! 

You no longer paint! 

You no longer construct! 

No one can ever improve on the masters ! 

All originality whatsoever is forbidden ! 

Banish follies and extravagances! You must copy, copy, copy! 

To win the paradise of art you must imitate the lives of our saints ! 

And over the doors of academies, museums, libraries and universities 
we write with the heroic charcoal of office stoves; 

TO THE EARTHQUAKE 
THEIR ONLY ALLY 

THE FUTURISTS DEDICATE 
THESE RUINS OF ROME AND ATHENS. 

Poets, painters, sculptors, musicians, you must fight . . . against 
the principle of inertia and slumber. For the world needs only heroism; 
pardon, as we do, the bloody and lawless deed of the student of Palermo, 
Lidonni, who avenged himself contrary to law against a tyrannic profes- 
sor. The passe~ist professors are the only ones responsible for this 
murder, those passeA^t professors who seek to suffocate the indomitable 
energy of Italian youth In fetid subterranean channels. When, oh 
when, will there be an end of this castrating of the spirits that must 
create the future! . . . We must hurry to remake everything. We 
must go against the current. Soon will come the moment when we can 
no longer be content to defend our ideas with our bare hands and fists, 
when we must begin the assault in the name of intelligence, the artistic 
assault, the literary assault on that glorified crust of tyrant professors. 

Our immediate program is a desperate struggle against Italian pmsi-^ 
ism in all its repugnant forms; archeology, academicism, senility, quiet- 
ism, poltroonery, pacifism, pessimism, nostalgia, sentimentalism, erotic 
obsession, tourist industry, etc. Our ultra violent nationalism is anti- 
clerical, anti-socialist, anti-traditional and is based on the inexhaustible 
.vigor of Italian blood and wages war on the cult of our ancestors who 
far from cementing our race make it anemic and wanton. . . . Futtir- 



2U 


THE REVOLT OF YOUTH 

ism * is an atmosphere of the vanguard; it is the battle cry of all 
the innovators^ of the inteilectua! free lances of the world; it is the 
love of the new; the impassioned art of velocity; the systematic def- 
amation of the antique, the old, the slow, the erudite and the profes- 
sorial; it is a new way of looking at the world; a new reason for loving 
life; an enthusiastic gloridcatlon of scientihc discoveries and modern 
mechanism, a banner of youth, of strength, of originality, at any cost; 
... it is a box of dynamite for all the venerated ruins. . . . The futur- 
ists are ^ the mystics of action/ 

Inspired by such preaching, not by their studies or professors, the uni- 
versity students became ardent devotees of the new and higher thought- 
They joined the free lances and apostles of mystic action,’’ and in this 
atmosphere soon found the intellectual life both freer and easier than 
before. From this point of view the War, arditism,” squadrism and 
similar forms of '' action ” took on a profound and beautiful significance 
in the imaginations of the actors ” They were the embodiments of the 
new art, expressions of the new spirituality. And when their deeds 
finally carried them into political power, they were more than ever 
convinced of the truth of their '' thought/’ The “ government of artists ” 
which Marinetti had prophesied was being realized. 

Thus emboldened these escaped students and protagonists of the 
new era turned on the old culture and its academic representatives with 
a vengeance. They began to expound at length the superiority of their 
active, anti-intellectualistic culture and to ascribe the most profound 
meanings to their careless deeds. Gentile and the young idealists, with 
their philosophy of the pure act, discovered fascism to be the embodi- 
ment of the new thought that was too vital, too real to be expressed 
in '‘^abstract” form. Forges-Davanzati and the national politicians 
went about preaching the doctrine that real culture must always be 
closely linked to politics.^® Mussolini’s Dantesque prose ” was held 
up as a supreme creation of Italian art and intellect. By the futurist 
fajchti all academic discussions of professors as well as the conventional 
articles in the big liberal dailies, were ridiculed as pathetic performances 
of a degenerate old age, and fascism was proudly heralded as anti- 
philosophic in essence- Fascism has no philosophy and wants none. 
Its inability to formulate its ideas into a coherent system is not lamented 
as a deficiency, but exalted as the most certain evidence of its creative 
freshness/"^ Mussolini loses his patience when he is confronted with 

i» Marinetti: Futm-ismo s Fmmsm.o^ fasslm, v. Also Appendix % 

and 34- 

V, His Fmckmo 4 C^tmra^ 

cf- Carli: Fmckma pp- 97—9, 42-50. 



EDUCATIONAL REFORM 


235 

the conventional labels of political theory. ^^For he said, *^ail 
these terminologies of right, left, conservative, aristocracy, democracy, 
are empty scholastic terminology; sometimes they serve to make dis- 
tinctions, but more often to make confusion.” In short, the fascisti 
claim that they have worked a revolution in intellect as well as in 
government. 

Professor Gentile, however, though he is a leading exponent of this 
doctrine, is nevertheless still a professor. He has taken the matter more 
seriously and soberly than most of his colleagues of the revolution, and 
has tried to lay the practical foundations for the new culture by his 
.educational reform. We have already spoken of his introduction of 
religious education into the schools. This was a mere Incident In a 
more general and sweeping reform of the whole educational system. 
.The fundamental idea of the reform is summed up in the following 
words of one of the reformers: We are beginning to understand that 
human personality does not consist in matter but in the absolute reality 
of the mind, as a unified whole, whose being lies in its ability to multiply 
itself in the process of its own growth. To create this synthesis of 
human personality it is necessary above all to respect it, and not to plan 
its disintegration and suffocation in the dead mass of scattered items 
.of knowledge. ... To teach well is not to pile the baggage of bits of 
information on to the pupil, and to impose on him the results already 
given and completed by the thought of another, but above all to promote 
the activities of the pupil in the conquest of scientific truths, which are 
valuable only in so far as they are the results of his own work and repre- 
sent his own conquest. . . . Hence a synthesis in the person being 
educated is realized spontaneously every time he really educates him- 
self, that is every time he feels the value of his own person in acquiring 
a new idea, undergoing a new experience, overcoming a limitation, wid- 
ening the orbit of the life of his imagination. . . , Our mind has a 
•value not for what it knows materially, but for its capacity to win 
ever new knowledge. And what the mind knows is valuable only 
as a means to be employed in knowing more. Hence the value of 
the school consists essentially in its enhancement of the abEity to 
learn,” 

The practical realization of this program of educating the use 
of the mind rather than its external accomplishments, is somewhat 
more modest, of course, but is nevertheless noteworthy. In its 
main lines it Is a continuation cm a large scale of the work begun 
by Gentile^s predecessor in the Ministry of Education, Benedetto 

La Naova Paiiiica, I, p. 24. 

Balbino GioIkiiO': La FfMim Scaktstim dal Gamwmo Nammmh^ fp, S4— 5. 



236 EDUCATIONAL REFORM 

Croce. The schools are reorganized to fit themselves to Ae actual prac- 
tical needs of various types of students. The most radical reorganiza- 
tion was made in the" secondary^ schools, which now consist of five 
distinct kinds: (i) Regular High Schools (licei-gimnasii) which are pre- 
paratort'' to university studies and which have two types of curriculum, 
the classic and the modern,’^ each preparing for a different type of uni- 
versity studies 5 (2) the Professional Schools {Istituti t^'cnici} giving a 
strictly professional training; (3) Junior High Schools {scuole comple- 
special sixth, seventh and eighth year work for those who are 
not going ahead to further studies but need technical education for 
the skilled trades: (4) Normal Schools {istituti magistrali); {$) Girls" 
Finishing Schools (Ikei feminili). For each of these* there is a State en- 
trance examination, which is supposed not so much to measure work 
already done in the elemcntaiy' schools, as to measure capacity to go 
ahead successfully in these various secondary schools. The State ex- 
aminations not only enforce more uniform and severe standards on the 
public schools, but make it possible for private schools to send their 
graduates to these secondary schools on the same basis as the public 
schools. While the chief aim of the elementary school reform is to stand- 
ardize it, the universities on the other hand are to be given greater free- 
dom. Smaller, struggling universities are to be abolished and a maximum 
amount of freedom for research and individual scholarship is to be given 
to the professors of the big universities. 

As far as possible artificial school exercises, compositions and lessons 
are replaced by more up-to-date methods of helping a child to an intel- 
ligent control of his activities. The subject-matter is vitalized, notably 
by the introduction of practical instruction in religion, fine arts (espe- 
cially music and drawing) and the mechanical arts. The methods of 
teaching traditional subject-matters are also revised. Latin and Italian, 
for instance, are coordinated; history is freed from the old-fashioned 
chronological exercises and is linked to philosophy, which latter Is thereby 
freed from its former dialectical formalities and given a footing in histori- 
cal tradition. Perhaps this much of the details of the reform will suffice 
to give the reader an idea of what the fascisti mean by their opposition 
to academic intellectualism ” in the matter of education. 

' So radical a reform naturally encountered obstinate resistance. 
I'eachers objected because of the new tasks imposed on them; students 
because the examinations were too difficult; and parents because their 
children were excluded from the high schools. To appease this op- 
position the strict Gentile was retired and he was succeeded by more 
lenient taskmasters, but on the whole his reforms have been enforced 
^nd the most difficult period of readjustment is already passed. In the 



JOURNALIST INTELLECT 237 

secondary schools its effects are most marked; in the universities, how- 
ever, the reform has had but slight success. 

The jascisti are not mere hard-headed “ men of action who spurn 
all speculations and attend to business. On the contrary, nothing 
is more characteristic of a fascist than a passionate devotion to theorizing. 
Much of it is amateurish, but it is spontaneous. 

The flood of fascist journalism is the most conspicuous witness to this 
fact. The regime is a regime founded by a journalist, carried on by 
journalists, to the undoing of journalism. Every ambitious young 
fascist thinks it his duty to hai’e his own journal; and as a matter of 
fact, the government fills a large percentage of its jobs wdth journalists 
who have succeeded in making a loud and loyal noise. There Is a 
saying that the first priniciple of fascist philosophy is not cognita ergo 
sum, but faccio rumor e quindi sono. The government has suppressed 
fascist papers by the score, but they still flourish in superabundance 
and their editors still find themselves in a favorable position when jobs 
are being distributed. The great bulk of this journalism consists in 
philosophizing on current events, rationalizing the acts of the govern- 
ment and paraphrasing the words of the Duce. It is the sort of 
stuff that under ordinary competitive conditions would find no mar- 
ket. Of course it has no market even now. It is an expensive 
hixury, kept up because politically it pays editors and authors to 
advertise.^^ 

The most respectable of the fascist periodicals is no doubt the national- 
ist Politic a, of which we have spoken previously. Gerarchia, founded 
by Mussolini and now directed by Margherita Sarfatti, has the most 
official air but is noted more for the variety than for the distinction of 
its contents. The official publication of the Fascist Institute of Culture, 
directed by Gentile, is called Educazione Fascista, and publishes some 
of the better little things by fascist scholars, especially by those of the 
idealist school. The University organizations have a monthly called 
Vita Nova. The recently established weekly literary review Ftera 
Letteraria is conducted under fascist auspices, but otherwise there is 
nothing distinctively fascist about it. Of the Ci^ka Fasdsta we have 
already spoken at length. Then there are small sheets centering about 
more or less individual points of view, such as Suckert^s Conquisto ddlo 
State, Soffici’s Vltaliam, Gorgolini^s // Nazionale, and a number of 
others. 

The stock apology for this literature (and not all of it needs apology) 
is that it is at least fresh. It is an honest effort of new minds to break 

For an idea of the nature and extent of fascist joiimalMai the biMiogxapliy 
in tbe Appendix. 



238 SUCKERT 

new channels, and as such must not be expected to achieve positive 
results immediately. Or, as it is sometimes put, the mere fact that the 
foreign domination and foreign patterns whicn have shaped Italian 
culture for several generations have been broken, is itself a significant 
positive achievement. It marks the beginnings of a genuine Italian 
renaissance, the foundations of Italian " spiritual imperialism.” 

A few Iiterar>' expresssions of this confidence in the new Italian cul- 
ture rise above the level of common journalism. Here we are not 
thinking of older men like Gentile, whose philosophy was already made 
before the advent of fascism, but of some of the younger men who have 
worked directly under the stimulus of fascism. 

There is, for example, Curzio Suckert (now Malaparte), an ex- 
xepublican, who has been the most ardent defender of the theory that 
fascism is a renewal of the strictly' classic Italian tradition. Accord- 
ing to him there is a fundamental conflict in Europe between two 
cultures: between that of the northwest, Protestant, scientific, critical, 
modern peoples, and that of the southeast, Catholic, dogmatic, artistic, 
classic. Ever since the Reformation Italy has tried to imitate its north- 
ern modern rivals and has failed. Italians are physically incapable of be- 
ing critical, scientific, democratic, progressive, “civilized”; they are a 
classic, static, “ barbaric race. The risorgimento was a first sign of 
revolt in Italy. It was primarily a reaction against the universalism, de- 
mocracy and “ fraternity ” of French Freemasonry. But no sooner had 
the revolt started than it fell back into the philosophy of the French Rev- 
olution, and tried to erect a liberal state on the F rench model. The lib- 
eral politicians were really “intellectual bastards” and their boast that 
they wanted to “ make Italians ” was untrue; they wanted to unmake 
them. At last this has definitely failed. Fascism marks a conscious 
Italian counter-reformation, a shaking off of modernity, a resurgence of 
the “ barbarian ” popolo d’ltalia and a resumption of the classic. Catho- 
lic, Latin tradition. This fascist Catholicism or neo-Guelfism, as it is 
called, must not be regarded as a defense of the orthodoxy of the Church. 
Suckert says himself he is “ a good Catholic but fiercely anti-clerical.” 
He regards the Church as but one expression of the essential catholicity 
of the race. A thoroughgoing Italian is “ catholic ” regardless of his 
religion. 

Fascism is a fresh embodiment of this native spirit in that it teaches 
the Italians that they must not look to revolutions or to so-called 
progress for their salvation; in that it substitutes for free critidsm, 
vrhich is foreign, the Italian spirit of artistic intuition, of irony, and 
of tragedy; in that it offers the people a hero and a myth, to satisfy 
their need of worship; in that it teaches the “national duty dF 



ROCCA 


239 

suffering and in that its syndicalism will organize the people as a 
people and not as classes (for classes are really foreign to Italian society, 
which is not sufficiently capitalistic to be adapted to socialistic ideology 
and politics).^® 

In a similar vein the late “ Volt ” writes: Unless we want to rob the 
work of the Italian mind of all ideal significance, we must admit without 
reserve that fascism has the character of an anti-revolution. 

The March on Rome is to the French Revolution what the Council of 
Trent was to the Protestant Reformation. Living is reaction. In fascism, 
Italy has again found itself by reacting. It has found its very self, not 
as formerly in scattered regional tradition, but in the unity of its new 
consciousness. 

In the name of Romanity Italy casts off its false prophets, breaks 
down the profaned altars of golden and silver Idols built during the 
century of perdition. We are at last tired of hearing the text of the 
Nordic He. Better for us the pagan orgies than to take lessons In 
morality from Emerson or Ruskin. . . . Man of the Revolution, ab- 
stract man, deified man, a grotesque parody of his Creator, has not 
succeeded in giving us law. Human will Is by nature discordant and can 
never give birth to a moral order. Order can not rise from disorder 
nor peace from the conflict of individual wills, truth from discussion, 
law from free-will, the state from contract, authority from liberty. Peace 
is possible only there where all bow before the authority of a tran- 
scendent power. 

In the face of European civilization, moth-eaten by individualism, 
imperial Italy solemnly asserts the necessity of a law imposed by God 
on human minds. The tide of history has turned. From Luther to 
Lenin, the cycle of the great heresy is closed. The society of the future 
will not be based on the ^ Declaration of the Rights of Man ’ but on the 
Syllabus.’* 

Massimo Rocca’s theory, while just as Catholic, is conceived less in 
terms of Italian nationalism and more in terms of a general European 
crisis. According to him ever since the Protestant Revolt European 
civilization and thought has been disintegrating, and since the French 
Revolution this process has rapidly gained momentum. First came the 
denial of tradition and reliance on historical values, then came material- 
ism both in philosophy and politics, then came the critical spirit (from 
Kant to Harnack), then came the distrust in reason itself and the des- 
peration of philosophy.’* In politics a similar decadence took pla<x 

V. Sucfcert: Emofa and Itdki Earkitra. Appendix No. 30. 

Volt: Fro^mmm dMa pp. 15 4*5* 



PELLIZZI 


240 

under the lead of demceracy and liberalism. And in art one tradition 
after another was o\*ertkrown until even Wagner had too much ^^form 
and simplicity to suit the modern school. 

The revolt against this degeneration began in France with the anti- 
intellectualism of Biondei and Bergson. But BlondeFs “ action found 
expression only in a bock and Bergson was forced to use intellectual 
concepts in his attack on intellectualism. In religion^ the modernists also 
tried a revolt in a positive, constructive direction but failed. Sorel tried 
it with syndicalism. Xationalism had a similar motivation- But none 
of these movements got beyond the level of the very intellectualistic 
criticism which they were attacking. In Italy, however, the disintegra- 
tion became acute, practical and political, menacing the very life of the 
nation. Hence in Italy the rescue also took practical form, a rescue of 
deeds not of w-ords. But now that the apparently thoughtless deeds 
are done, it becomes clear that they w'ere motivated by a general revolt 
against a general decadence. It represents a synthesis of the positive 
forces of nationalism, modernism, syndicalism, anti-intellectualism, and 
futurism. The new Roman period,” prophesied by Spengler, has al- 
ready begun.^® 

The Catholicism of these fascist philosophers reminds one of Gioberti^s 
remark that everyone has his own.” They are esthetic catholics,” 
homesick souls whom even the Church refuses to shelter. Pretending to 
be more catholic than the Church itself, they are really an isolated group 
of individuals, who do not want to be individualists, but who can not 
make their doctrines prevail. For neither in the church, nor among the 
fascbti have they succeeded in arousing more than a distant and sus- 
picious respect. And in fact they themselves take not a little satisfaction 
in being the enfmts terribles of the movement. It is indeed a most en- 
ticing heresy, this being catholic in defiance of the Church and being 
radically consen^ative in the service of a revolution. 

A more orthodox, more romantic note is sounded by such writers as 
Camillo Pellizzi. He has little use for philosophies of history and for 
long arguments about the relation of fascism to movements of the past. 
Philosophical reconstructions of history are but intellectual fads and 
fashions that come and go like the latest street song. And he answers 
to all these learned disquisitions: Risorgimento? Anti-risorgimento? 
Oh yes, we have no bananas. ...” For him it is sufficient to establish 
the fact that there is a fundamental contrast between the old bour- 
geoisie ” and the new fascist aristocracy. The contrast is typified to his 
mind by the two idealists Croce and Gentile. In the formePs system 
everything is closed, neatly arranged and permanently ordered. He 
Massimo Kocca; II Fasmmo ml femssro modemo, in Ids^ sul Fasdsmo. 



PELLIZZI 


241 

tells the story of how he and other students of Croce were once listening 
to him as he outlined the majestic structure of his system and then 
wound up by saying, “ And now to you, young men, belongs all the de- 
tailed work! At this Pellizzi rebelled; he w^as not going to do detail 
work in any master’s workshop. The big outlines must be left open. 
Gentile has left them open, and hence his philosophy still lives. But as 
for Croce, he is the last of the bourgeoisie/^ He lives in a static world 
of everlasting being, just as the old bourgeoisie imagined that its eco- 
nomic and political order must necessarily be the permanent framework 
of the universe. This petrified bourgeoisie was rudely thrown out by a 
living, young, heroic aristocracy. And like all heroes, these jascisti em- 
bodied their thoughts in their deeds. 

Pellizzi writes as one of the heroes: “Our objectives and aims must 
be determined not by the learned, but by the active heads of our 
work, day by day. The ^ thinker ’ of fascism is and remains Benito 
Mussolini; for he has thought out fascism in the process of making it. 
This is the primary, concrete mode of political thinking. But you say, 
if fascism can thus be reduced to nothing but action, . . . wherein does 
this thing you call fascist thought consist and how can it be distinguished? 
The answer is in the question. The kernel of fascist thought is con- 
tained in so conceiving fascism. That is, in conceiving politics as cre- 
ative action and will. And that the thoughts that are being thought, or 
the schemes, systems and concepts of social and political life 'which 
fascism is continually establishing and evolving from its own bosom, are 
therefore not doctrines premised or facts postulated by fascist action, 
but rather are the fruits, products and derivations of the creative action. 
. . . We start out with the idea that politics is an original creation of the 
spirit and that the spirit realizes itself in politics as an absolute respon- 
sibility to itself and to its own action and in politics creates its own moral 
personality. It is man creating himself; but also God creating man. By 
willing ’ in this way, man feels a power within him overflowing into 
action to which he can not deny an absolute value, the quality of absolute 
reality, and even the quality of a transcendent reality. Not every deed 
of man is consequently good, but every deed of man that is inspired by 
this total, mystical responsibility.” 

This is, so to speak, the minimum of fascist philosophy. For a maxi- 
mum we might mention the work of Pasini^ a writer in the newspaper 
UImpero, who has developed a theory of Simrchia^ which is supposed 
to be, according to him, a summa polUka, as St. Thomas wrote a 
siimma theologka. The theory is most briefly expounded diagram- 
matically: 

Camillo Pellizi: Fascismo Aristocra^^ pp. 46—8. v. Also Appendix No, 31. 



242 FUTURISM 

The Universal Siaarchic State is a fusion of the three aristocracies: 

I, The aristocracy of the Will * - . The government . . , The 
symbol of Empire or of absolute political authority. 

2« The aristocracy of feeling or sentiment . . . The Church . . . The 
cross, svmboi of divine authority. 

3. The aristocracy of intelligence . . . Economic order and sci- 
ence . . . The bank, symbol of economic organization. 

Each of these three faculties of the spirit is organized as a hierarchy and 
the three hierarchies are fused into a single '' creative synthesis of The 
Genius of the Raced’ Stato unico in chiesa dkina/' 

This gives the bare theme of the rhapsody; the embellishments are 
equally exalted and yield no end of trinitiesd^ 

IF. Fascist Aft 

Of the early political and intellectual affiliations of fascism and futur- 
ism we have already spoken. Certainly Marinetti and his associates 
were among the most active and conspicuous members of the Mussolini 
group of 1919 and earlier. And these men definitely expected to make 
fascism the political vehicle of futurism. But as we have seen the early 
program of the Milan fascio failed completely and by 1921 the spirit and 
membership of fascism was far beyond anything which the futurists 
could hope to control. In faa the radical anti-clericalism and anti- 
monarchism of Marinetti became a liability rather than an asset for 
fascism and when the futurist pre^ram was abandoned Marinetti and a 
few faithful followers abandoned fascism. A large number of the 
futurists (Settimelii, Carli, Bolzon, E. Rocca, Volt, etc.) abandoned their 
extreme position and adapted themselves to fascism, whose ideas were 
less fixed and whose fortunes were better. In this way futurism early 
lost its grip on the movement, and art of any sort was pushed into the 
background. Mussolini personally has continued his friendship with 
Marinetti and his enthusiasm for the new art. The Rivista del Popolo 
d^talia and Gerarckia are full of futurist designs and Mussolini is evi- 
dently pleased by the futurist bust and portraits which have been made 
of him. This suffices to give the movement a limited prestige or at least 
a toleration which it did not enjoy before. The government has forced 
the museums and expositions to give space to futurist works and the 
futurists in turn are making It a point to employ fascist themes and ma- 
terials in their designs. The synthetic theatre and the theatre of 
surprise ’’ founded and sponsored by Marinetti have found some foot- 
^ V. Achille Pasini : Jmfsro Unko. 



FUTURISM 


243 

hold, though very meagre. The more successful work of Pirandello, 
though quite independent of either fascism or futurism, has elements 
which are claimed to be futurist; but in general it is too much infected 
with “ psychologism ” to please Marinetti. In this connection Marinetti 
says: I believe it is now urgent to combat the psychologism of the 
theatre in its various forms: 

1. Scientific-documentary psychologism of the passe-ht type. 

2. Semi-futurist psychologism alia Paris, fragmentary, effeminate, 
ambiguous (Proust). 

3. Italian psychologism that disguises as futuristic, analyses that are 
bulky, lawyerish, heavy, funereal, moralistic, professorial, pedan- 
tic, with relative decrepit Hamletisms: ^To be or not to be; to live 
or to dream ’ and philosophical dialogues without any plastic syn- 
thesis. 

These psychologisms are all three of them equally analytic, long and 
anti-Italian, that is, contrary to the beautiful lyric, spirited, explosive, 
improvising, winged, colorful qualities of our race. 

“ Therefore we have created two new forms of theatre (making the 
round of eighteen Italian cities as The New Futurist Theatre): 

** I. An abstract, alogical synthesis of pure elements that portray the 
living forces of the action to the audience without any psychology. An 
abstract synthesis is an alogical, surprising combination of blocks of 
typical sensations. 

“ 2. A tactile, muscular, athletic, mechanical synthesis without psy- 
chology.” 

Whether or not this is fascist art, the government has given it little 
practical encouragement. Clarlantini, the politician who is chiefly re- 
sponsible for promoting art, admitted that the policy of the government 
was not to encourage exceptional theatres,” not even that of Pirandello, 
but to subsidize a few regular, standard companies who know how to 
follow the way of the Italian tradition with a just sense of modernity.” 
He admitted also that the Italian theatre was not in a flourishing condi- 
tion but expressed the pious hope that it is not improbable that out of 
all the energies being dedicated to the theatre today, a period of some 
importance for the Italian stage will be born; Italy, it must be remem- 
bered, is a land of miracles.” ** In other words the government Is play- 
ing safe: supporting the big popular theatres and trusting in miracles for 
a revival of art. 

In music the modernists, who are affiliated with the Italian futurist 

^ F. T, Marinetti: Verso im Tea^o JnS^-pskologicOy in II August 1926, 
p. 44.. See also Appendix No. 34. 

^ Frana> Ciarlantmi: ImferMkmo Sfmtmde^ pp. S4, Si. 



D\\XXUXZIO 


244 

movement^ are gradually getting more of a hearing, but they are no more 
popular among the fascisii than among others. 

The stronghold of the futurists has been architecture. Marinetti has 
persistently raged against the Roman and medieval ruins of Rome, 
Florence and Venice, and the other prize pieces of '' passe-hm^ And he 
wants the new Italy to be built on an architectural plan suggested by 
the bis: Industrial centers of ?^lilan and Genoa, the new Italy ’’ of steel, 
mechanism, power and velocity. When Mussolini announced his plan 
of rebuilding and enlarging Rome, the futurists immediately set to work. 
With Prampolini at their head, they drew up plans for a genuinely new 
Rome. Their suggestions have met wnth little general success, and the 
latest plans published, though they are by no means final, are quite 
conventional — elaborate but not distinctive. The new^ building of the 
Vlinistry of the Marine has no particular architectural merit, and up to 
the present at least, as one writer says, “ the light is certainly not coming 
from Rome.”“® The tw^o outstanding contributions towmrd a new 
architecture have come from sources not immediately in the government: 
one, the PoHsportivo of Bologna, a massive cement stadium, and the 
other, the new building of the Confederation of Fascist Labor Syndicates 
at Rome. 

Besides futurism there are at least two other major centers of fascist 
art. One is the idealist Vocist group, primarily interested in literature, in 
a revival of a free light Italian style. It has made an effort to liberate 
Italian idealism from the heavy style imposed upon It by its German pro- 
genitors, and has also reacted against the heavy Romanism of d’An- 
nunzio. If "we omit the pre-fascists like Prezzoiini and Papini, the scat- 
tered writings of Ardengo SofHci are certainly the most distinguished 
w’ork of this group. They constitute a vigorous statement of the re- 
actions of an intelligent fascist to the fundamental changes in Italian 
society produced by the war, without any pretense of philosophic sys- 
tematization. He is a good example of revolt against revolutionism com- 
bined with a militant disdain for democracy and liberalism.^® He is also 
a painter of merit. 

Lastly there is the d’Annunzian school now on the decline, but never- 
theless still very influential. It is sufficiently well known not to need 
comment here. d’Annunzio, having rebelled against his German master, 
Nietzsche, and turned to pagan Rome, cultivated a heavy Latin style 
and an imperial bearing, and, having become the popular idol of the 
nation by his rescue of Fiume, has now retired to the country and re- 
lapsed into humility. In his palatial country hermitage ” he is now 

Volt: in Critica F^dsta, November i, 1926, p. 399. 

V. Soffid: BMiagik fra dm Wiitone, Also Appendix Nos. 7, S, 33. 



MUSSOLINI COMES OUT FOR ART 245 

quietly awaiting his end^ praising, in the meantime, the simplicity and 
poverty of his ^‘Franciscan brethren.” 

Among these three groups there is an active rivalry, and not a Httle 
of the internal political friction of which we spoke in the last chapter 
is at bottom a product of the antipathies of these groups of artists 
toward each other.®^ But no one of them or even all three of them have 
been able to dominate fascist so-called culture. In fact practically all 
the younger artists of distinction, whether of these groups or not, are 
fairly disgusted with the present state of fascist art. They blame the 
government for favoring second-rate conventional talent that is in no 
sense fascist, and allowing the fresh, original “ genius ” in the fascist 
ranks to go neglected.^® Certainly if the work of Ciarlantini is typical 
of the fascist government, there is ample ground for complaint. For 
though he makes a big stir about fascist art and Italy’s “ spiritual im- 
perialism,” he is concerned more with a cheap advertising of Italy’s 
spiritual goods on the foreign market, than with a critical encouragement 
of a fascist renaissance.^® But even Ciarlantini’s stand seems to be con- 
siderably superior to the general apathy among the official classes. 

At least this was the general state of affairs until the fall of 1926, 
when Mussolini caused considerable excitement in the camp. At the 
inauguration of the new home of the Authors’ Association, he spoke as 
follows: “ It is now up to our writers to carry on what may be called 
' spiritual imperialism in the theatre, in books, in lectures, they must 
make Italy known not only for its greatness in the past When I said 
I had visited only two art galleries, that was not true. I have visited a 
number. I meant to say that we must not stop at picture galleries, but 
must work inside ourselves, gnaw at our own vitals, torment ourselves 
internally, produce something new that will have the stamp of our times,” 
And a few weeks later, during the impressive celebration at Ferula, he 
paid his formal respects to the Academy of Fine Arts and to art in general, 
and said: “ Now that all the conditions longed for by the great Italians, 
first and foremost unity, are realized, a great art can develop in our land, 
embracing and in turn enhancing all phases of life, an art which must be 
traditionalist and at the same time modern, that must look to the past 
and at the same time to the future. 

“ We must not remain mere contemplators, we must not exploit the 

V. for example, Marinetti: UArte Fasdsta Futmisi^y in Criiica FmdaUf Jann- 
aiy I, 1927, p. 35 also Appendix No. 34 j and Malaparte (Susiert), in La Cow- 
qmsia dsUo SMOy December 15, 1926, p. 3, 

^ V. for example, Soffid: Arie Fmcistay in Critim FmcisfAy October 15, 1926, 
pp. 3 S3— 4. Also in Appendix No, 33. 

cf. Ciarlantini: Imfemdkmo sfirkmah. 



246 


FASCIST WORKS OF ART 

patrimony of the past. We must create a new patrimony to put beside 
the ancient one, we must create a new art, an art of our times, a fascist 
art.” 

These declarations were immediately given wide publicity and great 
importance was attached to tnem. Everyone began talking art. A few 
months later the Villa Farnesina in Rome was bought by the government 
as a seat for an Italian Academy, to be established immediately. All 
this means that the government wants to begin the fascist renaissance 
in earnest. 

There is universal agreement, however, that the government can not 
make art. The National Academy, and similar institutions are even 
looked upon suspiciously by some as a sign of a trend toward the con- 
ventional patronage and political organization of artists on foreign mod- 
els and traditional lines. Fascist art, they say, must take its rise from 
different quarters and under new forms. 

Among fascist anists there seems to be agreement on a few general 
ideas about what fascist art ought to be. Except for those futurists who 
stilt hope to be the exclusive representatives of fascist art, there is gen- 
era! agreement that fascism should not attempt to found a distinct 
school. The movement should be catholic enough to embrace any form 
of really creative art that is strictly Italian. For fascism aims to be 
broadly national in this respect as well as in politics. 

Secondly, fascist art must not be merely decorative, an artificial em- 
bellishment or an independent luxury. It must be a direct and natural 
expression of fascist life and indistinguishable from fascist activity. Art 
is not to be a distinct subject-matter or profession, but a quality of life 

— “ art life ” is the formula adopted from the d’Annunzians. The tra- 
ditional dualism between thought and action has been overcome by the 
fascist conception of art; a conception, they say, really implicit in the 
philosophy of Croce, had he carried out his method and regarded art as 
a synthesis of these two realms instead of falling back in his esthetics 
on the old dualism w'hich he had already transcended in his logic. Art 
is to life what form is to matter. Hence the fascisti are looking not so 
much toward art institutions like the theatre, the novel, the poem, the 
statue, the painting, as sources for the new art, but to politics, industry, 
sport, war, flying, building (of ships, houses, aqueducts, power plants, 
etc,). 

It is, for example, almost a commonplace among fascist “ art critics ” 
that the fighting of the war was the first great masterpiece of fascist art 

— literally a work of art, both In its general conception and in its de- 
tails. The futurists, of course, are loudest in the praise of military 

See Appefldix No. jz. 



THE UNITY OF FASCIST CULTURE 


247 

esthetics — not the old-fashioned courage and heroism^ but modern 
fighting — speed, power, huge mechanical, impersonal, dynamic organi- 
zation of forces. Quite apart from this futurist theoretical prejudice, 
however, there is a general admiration for the art of war. The same 
holds true of the art implied in the Jvlarch on Rome — even finer, they 
say, than the War for it displayed the same organized energies in a 
rhythmic way without the bloodshed and it had all the poetic qualities of 
sacrifice and ideal devotion without the physical torture. 

Another chief w^ork of fascist art is the Duce himself — a genuinely 
creative '' invention ” and a vital synthesis of speech, bearing and deeds. 
The reader must not take this metaphorically, for the whole point of 
the fascist doctrine is that genuine art must be expressed literally in 
the form of practical action and not in so-called works of art; and the 
whole essence of the fascist faith is this confidence in the esthetic values 
of their practical achievements. 

It follows that if fascist artists want to indulge in any of the more tra- 
ditional forms of art their works should at least express and interpret 
the values already embodied in the war, the revolution, and the fascist 
state. They must be imperial, expansive, synthetic, vigorous, clear, 
uncompromising, and suggestive of rapid, decisive action. This is the 
theory. And in theory the fascist! can well afford to be unanimous; 
there will be abundant opportunity for differences when it comes to 
applying it to particular works of art. But it is idle to anticipate these 
differences, for as yet there are no particular works of art to speak of. 

V. Fascist Morals 

In discussing separately fascist politics, religion, philosophy, art and 
morals, we have, of course, done violence to the essential unity of the 
fascist spirit, and the reader will no doubt have noticed that these sep- 
arate discussions are really but variations on a single theme, namely, 
that fascism is not a doctrine, but a way of life. Strictly speaking this 
doctrine must be lived in silence, it is mystic; the more it is put into 
words the further it is removed from reality. Unfortunately, however, 
Italy has always been a land of language and hence the Udianissimi 
fascisti must have their speeches, books and journals ! After all, speech, 
especially Italian speech, is a form of action. Certainly the fmcisti^'S 
accomplishments in this sphere of action are by no means the least of 
their achievements. For the world of the imagination which has been 
built upon It already far outshines, both in their own eyes and in those 
of foreign spectators, their more modest and substantial reforms. The 
external facts of fascist life really become quite insignificant once the 



,48 SPORT 

true inwardness and spirituality of the movement is grasped. Fascisms 
mind, then, is contained in ideal fascist morals and its culture is the 
character which every fascist thinks he possesses. 

The fascist character has been summed up by Mussolini in thir 
Nietzschean siogan “ live dangerously.” And he explains that by such 
a mode of life he means “ First of all courage, fearlessness, the love of 
risk, repugnance for a pot— bellied peaceful life, to be ever ready to dare 
in. private as in public life, to abhor all that is sedentary , the greatest 
clearness in one's dealings, face to face conversations and not clandestine, 
anonymous and base vociferations j the pride every hour of the day m. 
feeling oneself Italian, discipline in work, respect for authority. The 
new Italian.” ®- 

Gentile's version employs a different language but the meaning is 
much the same; “ Fascism means to take life seriously. Life is toil, ef- 
fort, sacrifice, hard work; a life in which we know very well that there 
is neither matter nor time for amusement. Before us there always stands 
an ideal to be realized, an ideal which gives us no respite- We have no 
time to lose. Even in our sleep we must give account of the talents en- 
trusted to us. . . . Our way of life is the serious way (the religious 
way, as I call it) of conceiving life and living it. A way which among 
other things does not allow us to be contented any longer with a show, 
passably pleasing and even instructive, rich in news and curious enough 
to stimulate even the most difficult and refined tastes, if in this show 
along with its delights, instruction, interest, and in its variegated ele- 
ments, there is no sign of the man himself, and no passion felt an in- 
tense and vigorous passion capable of enfolding the whole of life and of 
ruling the whole soul by that constant and vehement unity which is 
one of the most noted characteristics of the religious spirit.” 

This living religiously and dangerously has several aspects. I would 
mention first of all that of sport. The interest in sport has grown enor- 
mously in Italy during the last few years. Athletic clubs and sporting 
events are numerous. Everything from soccer to Alpine climbing and 
from bicycling to flying. The restricted daily press is inadequate to deal 
with the sporting news and consequently several newspapers devoted 
exclusively to sport are to be found in every city and their circulation is 
very large. This is due not merely to the censorship and dullness of 
political newspapers but to a genuine interest in athletics — not a casual 
interest in amusement and exercise, but a sporting interest in the 
American sense, a serious and passionate devotion to athletic conquest. 

Nmma Paiitkaf p. 22z. 

Mwsolml, June 21, 1925. Discord del J925, p* 104. 

** Gentile: CAe cosm e il fasdsmo^ pp, jS and 1^7, Also Appendix Mo. 29. 



THE WELL-ORDERED LIFE 


249 


It is the moral equivalent for empire. It exploits even play for 
purposes of moral discipline and prepares the mind and body for other 
more serious forms of conflict — not more serious in their Inner quality 
but in their practical consequences. 

The government is encouraging sport both directly and indirectly. 
It was no mere gesture when Mussolini, after outlining the fascist mode 
of life as quoted above, held up De Pinedo as the champion new 
Italian.’’ Flying, of course, has its military side and its heroic appeal, 
and naturally received recognition. But other important forms of 
rivalry and sport were also given an exceptional encouragement and 
official political recognition. In fact, interest in sport among the poli- 
ticians is nothing short of sensational, for Italian politicians tradition- 
ally are not only too old for sport but too dignified. 

Vice versa, unfascist forms of amusement are being discouraged. 
All dance halls and cabarets must be closed at midnight, partly because 
they are sources of immorality, but chiefly because they are uneconomi- 
cal, unwholesome and above all un-Italian. There is a censorship of 
moving pictures and theatres in the interests of morals. In August 1926 
a decree was issued obliging moving picture theatres to include an 

educative film of propaganda and culture ” in their programs, but this 
has not been enforced as yet, though a private firm has been given the 
contract to furnish these ofiScial educational films. There is an intensive 
campaign against swearing either in the name of God or Country, and 
25,000 of the 187,000 bars and wine rooms, cheap venders of ruinous 
felicity,” have been closed and more are threatened with the same 
treatment. In general the government has no hesitation about regulat- 
ing morals and amusements as it (or perhaps the Church) may deem fit. 
For there is no aspect of life too private to fall outside the fascist picture. 
Even play is serious, and even sleep, as Gentile says, is a political 
function. 

One ardent young fascist writes : “ Today, as never before, the need 
is felt not so much of a program as of a practical, severe, Dominican rule 
of life. May not this be the time to lay down the tables of the fascist 
law? Laws of daily life, private as well as social or collective? ” ^ At 
this Gentile personally revolted, for though he preaches the stato etico, 
he has an idealist, not a Dominican, conception of the moral law. But 
among many of the younger fasdsti there Is a veritable passion for 
#bedience — not perhaps for their own obedience: they feel its need in 
general: when It comes to themselves they usually talk like lawgivers — 
not in their own name, of course, but as mouthpieces for the Duce. 

Mussolini, May 2 1927. 

Gioacdimo Contri, in CrUicm Fmcmtu, August 15, 1916, p. 305, 



GIOVINEZZA 


250 

Another trait of fascist character is giovinezza. This concept has 
pained a rich emotional fringe’^; it is hard to define but everywhere 
displayed. It Is first of all literally physical youth. Italian politics has 
not seen so young a breed of politicians for many a generation. The 
fascisti like to point out that Giolitti was the first prime minister since 
Cavour to achieve that office at the early age of fifty! Depretis was 
seventy-four years old when he ended his last ministry; Crispij seventy- 
seven; Giolitti himseifi seventy-nine. Rocco says of the last-named, he 
WRs the head of an old system, a product of an old mentality and of old 
Italian vicesA 

Compared with this oM type of statesman, the fascisti certainly mark 
a revolution. Settimelli wrote; It is a real relief to think that Musso- 
lini, the product and leader of this great movement, fascism, is only 
thirty-seven years old, and loves all the sportsd^ 

The juvenile rituals wffikh accompany the movement have turned the 
whole country into a college fraternity. The fascist anthem, Giovinezza^ 
was originally a student song at Turin, popularized during the war. 
Now that the new recruits of the fascist party are coming almost ex- 
clusively from the graduates ’’ of the Avanguardia^ the movement is 
taking on an even more youthful character. '' All Italy is but twenty 
years old today/" said Mussolini. 

This physical youth implies youthful politics. The main burden of 
political responsibility is of course not on the shoulders of youths. The 
mature liberals in the first cabinet were gradually supplanted by mature 
nationalists, and the government is by no means as young as It sounds. 
Nevertheless the political atmosphere, the press and platform are domi- 
nated by youthful spirits. Early fascism and squadrism was of course 
full of student pranks and its politics was largely a form of sport. On 
numerous occasions, for example, communist speakers were captured, 
their heads shaved, the tricolor painted on their scalps and then they 
^ were pushed out on to the platform to speak. The castor oil treatment 
too was more frequently ludicrous than brutal. 

Though fascist politics has sobered down considerably since the days 
of the revolution, it still retains many of the characteristics of a student 
movement. Political arguments are more ad hominem, political speeches 
less academic, political tactics less reserved than they used to be. The 
Chamber of Deputies acts more like a fraternity convention than like a 
legislative body, especially when Mussolini appears in sight Politics 
in general is a form of excitement rather than a field of reflective 
deliberation. 

w Polftka^ Jamiary 1920, p. 315. 

Quoted in Gorgoliai : II Fascismo hdla mtm p. zo. 



ARISTOCRACY 


251 

But gioznnezza has also its more positive side: it is exuberanccj energy, 
self-confidence, and optimistic faith. Today writes one of these 
giovani, “ we can believe with some assurance that we are finding our- 
selves again, that is, our eternally youthful spirit, which the incrusta- 
tions of mediocre periods had concealed under a coat of filth and which 
today can shine more brightly than ever, . . . Now our most diverse 
capacities and possibilities, from apostolic asceticism to the spirit of 
adventure, from the dolce far niente to the most feverish activity, from 
the Vesuvian songs to the daring playing of the stock market, from 
superstition to sport, from impassioned crime to the most perfect in- 
dustry, must be fused a little, harmonized and encouraged. The true 
Italian, complete and modern, shares a little in all these qualities; he is 
a poet, an adventurer, an apostle, a boxer, lover, grandee, leader of 
masses, warrior and builder. . . . He conquers Fiume and holds it in 
spite of all the Great Powers. He conquers Rome and establishes there 
the law of the new youth. . . . This Italian, this extraordinary indi- 
vidual, from a foreigner’s point of view”, but common enough among us, 
is naturally hated and besieged by all the ^weapons which the ‘ residues 
of the past ’ can command. 

“ The cornerstone of the nation is the indomitable energy of a man, 
who impersonates youth, but not that green, thoughtless, light and 
volatile youth which literary tradition pictures, but the youth full of 
thought and of fire, supported by an awakened consciousness and power 
of will, which, having come early Into contact with life, having realized 
at once its dramatic contrasts and painful depths and through the 
severest of tests having armed itself with optimism and with the faith 
necessary to meet fate victoriously. This is the youth represented by 
Mussolini and by the generation which with him waged the war, fought 
the fight of fascism, and is today preparing itself to realize the imperial 
destiny of Italy.” 

Implied in the idea of giovinezza is that of the new aristocracy, the 
genuine classe dirigente. The fascisti have an unbounded confidence 
in their capacity to lead the nation politically and culturally as well as 
physically. They frankly call themselves the best part of the nation, 
the elite. They look down on the masses as incapable of self-government, 
of ideals, of anything beyond their personal concerns, as so much raw 
material which must be molded by a superior class. The faidsti are the 
leaders of the people, they say, but they are not of it. On the other 
hand, they are still less of the bourgeoisie. Economically speaking they 
may belong to the lower middle classes, but culturally they are the 
cream of the nation. They look down on the masses with condescension, 
Mario Carli: FmckmQ pp. 13 and 35. 



THE HEROIC BREED 


252 

but on the bourgeoisie with moral indignation. The reign of the middle 
classes Is over^ and Italy once more has a genuine nobility, a ruling 
class composed of that small minority who carrj” the spiritual burden of 
the nation. As such the jascisti have not only the right but the duty to 
govern. They have measured up to their tasks, they say, have taken 
over the most technical and responsible posts of the government, posts 
which hitherto had been reserved for old age, and have proved their 
superiority. And as for the old bourgeoisie ” in and out of Parlia- 
ment, this degenerate class, they say, has been beaten physically and is 
now being beaten morally and mentally. In place of an egoistic, mate- 
Italy now has a truly aristocratic government. It is ruled by men 
of strength, energy and confidence, men who have a genuine interest 
in the national welfare, who are not tied by profession or tradition to 
vested interests, but are free to serve the ideal ends which they profess. 
Pellizzi, one of these young aristocrats, is so enthused over the virtues 
of this new class that he seriously proposes making it an hereditaiy^ 
aristocracy, for the purpose of breeding “true gentlemen.’^ He ad- 
dresses his fellow noblemen as follows: “You are aristocrats, I say, be- 
cause you have strength ; and I say you have strength because you have 
faith. A faith not in any existing human law nor in any established 
institution of law or politics, but faith in the profound inspiration which 
comes from your owm souls. . . . You are the kind of men who do not 
take their law from others but who make it themselves. . . . Original 
makers of history ... For you are the virtuous, in the classic sense 
of the term; extremely ingenious and creative and very forceful, the 
independent molders of a new history.” 

Another writes: “In us aristocrats, there shines the light of a noble 
^ myth the myth of a race of men no longer men, of a liberated race, 
without good or evil, without needs, without desire, without passion; a 
race of conquerors that no longer believes but ij, in a life of sheer 
cosmic power, in beings that have a terrifying look, that breathe freely 
in a world freed of * providence/ ‘ aims/ and ‘ reasons ^ — alone, gaz- 
ing without fear into the shadowy's where God no longer exists and where 
they themselves are the creators of God 

This is slightly exaggerated, of course, and tinged with a bit of “ un- 
fascist ” rhetoric. But the theme it celebrates is an old favorite. The 
fasdsti have merely revived the age-old ideal of heroic Italy. Fascist 
aristocracy is not conceived individualistically; it is not Nietzschean. 
It is the idea of an aristocratic class leading a heroic nation. The 

Camiilo Pellizzi; Fascfsmo Jnstacrasiaf pp, 10 1—2. 

^ J. Ewk, in Crkiat Fstscfsta^ October 15, 1926, p. 393. 



THE HEROIC BREED 253 

emphasis is on the ideal unity of the people. The Italians, oppressed 
for centuries and internally divided for a still longer period, have the 
heroic, romantic traditon ground into them. And naturally the romance 
has hitherto been tinged with sadness and pessimism. Italy has fought 
for generations, not out of hope but out of sheer moral ardor. It has 
willingly sacrificed itself on the altar of its seemingly impossible aims. 
Now after a comparatively short struggle, the fight for political liberty 
and unity has been won. But the larger struggle for economic liberty 
and national expansion immediately looms up. Liberalism renounced 
the new struggle and sought to settle down in peace. Fascism, on the 
other hand, has taken up once more the familiar and hard gospel of the 
“ national duty of suffering,” as Suckert calls it. But this time, not with- 
out hope. For fascism is confident that Italy’s imperial destiny will soon 
be realized. In the meantime, however, the call is to the old heroic 
virtues of sacrifice, discipline, duty. Italy’s struggle with her richer 
neighbors and with easy-going liberalism is fundamentally the issue 
between Stoicism and Epicureanism, or, as one writer expresses it, “ the 
issue between the heroic and the sanitary life.” Italy could settle down 
like some of her neighbors to a peaceful mediocrity. But Italy is Italian 
and prefers to “ live dangerously.” Hence the need of a class of con- 
querors, and the duty of utilizing Italy’s natural fund of genius to the 
utmost. 

“ Sometimes,” said Mussolini, “ I play with the idea of a laboratory 
for making generations: that is, of creating the class of warriors, ever 
ready to die; the class of inventors, pursuing the secret of mystery; the 
class of judges, the class of great captains of industry, of great explorers, 
of great governors. And it is by means of such a methodical selection 
that the great classes are created which in turn will create the empire. 
To be sure this is a lofty dream; but I see it being realized little by little. 
. . . The goal is always — Empire! To build a city, to found a coloaiy, 
to establish an empire, these are the prodigies of the human spirit An 
empire is not merely territorial; it may be political, economic, spiritual. 
. . . Toward this we must move. And therefore we must resdutely 
abandon the whole liberal phraseology and way of thinking. The word 
of command can be none but this: discipline. Discipline at home, in 
order that abroad we may present the granite block of a single national 
will.”« 

Mussolini: Discorsi id 1925,, pp* io5“6« 




dPPENDlX 


Selections from Fascist Literature and Documents of 
Fascist History 



The translation of much of the technical material in this Appendix is 
literal rather than idiomatic. This has been done partly to preserve the 
Italian terms for which no English equivalents exist, and partly to give 
the English reader an impression of the variety of style, or lack of style, 
which fascist literature presents. 



PART I 


The War Party 
No. I. Mussolini Makes a Start 

(The following is taken from Mussolini’s editorial in the first number 
of the Popolo d'ltalia, November 15, 1914, entitled Audacia. It Is his 
challenge to the Socialist Party after his expulsion at the convention of 
Bologna.) 

On the morrow of the famous oecumenical gathering at Bolognay in 
which, to speak rather solemnly, I was ^burned but not refuted/ I asked 
myself the question which I have answered today by founding this 
journal of ideas and of battle- I asked myself, should I speak or keep si- 
lent? Should I retire into the tent like a weary and deluded soldier, or 
might it not be necessary that by another weapon I resume my fighting 
post? ... If it were a matter of secondary importance I would not have 
felt the need, still less the duty, of founding a journal; but now whatever 
may be said by the neutralists of conservative socialism, there is a 
formidable question to be solved: the destinies of European socialism 
are very closely bound up with the possible results of this war; to be 
disinterested means to detach oneself from history and life, to work for 
reaction and not for the social revolution. Ah no! Revolutionary Ital- 
ian socialists, whether they be guided by reasoning or urged blindly 
but infallibly by sentimental intuitions, know what the cry is that must 
be raised by the Italian proletariat- Neutrality can not be a dogma 
of socialism. For is it only in socialism and more specifically in 
Italian socialism that ^ absolute ’ truths are to be found that can defy 
the injuries of time and the limitations of space with impunity, like 
the indisputable and eternal truths of divine revelation? But ab- 
solute truth about which there is no dispute and which can neither 
be denied nor renounced, is dead truth; worse still it is murderous truth. 
We are not and do not wish to be mummies, everlastingly immovable 
with our faces always turned to the same horizon and enclosed in the 
narrow hedges of subversive hypocrisy, where formulae are mechani- 
cally mumbled like the prayers of ritualist religions; but we are men 
and live men who wish to g^ve our contribution however modest to 
historical creation. Inconsistency? Apmtasy? D^ertion? Never- 
more- It remains to be seen on what side the inconsistent, the apos- 



258 MUSSOLINI MAKES A START 

tales, and the deserters are to be found. Tomorrow’s histor}' will tell it, 
but our prophetic abilities are able to foresee it. 

If there will be a little more liberty in Europe tomorrow, and hence 
an atmosphere politically better adapted to the development of social- 
ism, to the building up of the capacities of the proletarian class, all those 
Will be deserters arxd apostates who, w^hen action was demanded, de- 
clined and stood aside. . . - 

Today, and I shout it loudly, anti-war propaganda is a propaganda of 
cowardice. It flourishes because it spurs and arouses the instinct of 
individual self-preservation. But for this very reason it is an anti- 
revolutionary propaganda. It is carried on by the temporalist priests 
and the Jesuits who have a material and spiritual interest in the preser- 
vation of the Austrian Empire; it is carried on by the bourgeoisie, the 
more or less smugglers, who, especially in Italy, have proved their 
lamentable political and moral inadequacy; it is carried on by the 
monarchists . . . ; this coalition of pacifists know^s very well what it 
wants and we can now easily explain the motives that inspire its attitude. 
But we socialists, except during the low period of bargaining reformism 
and of Gioiitti, have represented one of the live forces of the new Italy; 
now do we want to bind our future to these dead forces in the name of 
a peace that does not save us from the disasters of war today, and that 
will not save us from the undoubtedly greater dangers of tomorrow, 
and in any case will not save us from disgrace and from the universal 
disdain of those peoples who have undergone this great tragedy of 
history? Do we want to drag out our miserable daily existence blessed 
by the monarchic and bourgeois status quo, or do we rather want to put 
an end to this sordid and filthy mess of intrigues and baseness? May 
not this be our day? Instead of preparing ourselves to submit to pre- 
ordained events, a scandalous alibi, is it not better to try to control 
them? ... To cry: ^ We want war! ^ may not this be much more revo- 
lutionary under the circumstances than to cry ‘ down with war ’? 

These disquieting questions to which I for my part have replied, ex- 
plain the origins and aims of this paper. What I am doing today is an 
act of audacity, and I am not unaware of the difficulties In the under 
taking. They are many and complex, but I have the firm confidence 
that I can overcome them. I am not alone. Not all of my friends of 
yesterday will follow me, but many other rebel spirits will gather 
around me. I shall conduct an independent paper, exceptionally free, 
personal, my own. It will reflect my mind and mine alone, I have 
no aggressive intentions against the socialist party, nor against the 
organs of the party in which I expect to remain; but I have set out to 
fight all who may tiy to hinder the free discussion of a position which 
for various reasons I hold to be basic to the national and internarional 
interests of the proletariat 

I care nothing for the malicious and the idiotic- Let the former re- 
main in their mire and the latter go to pieces in their intelleaual void 



LONG LIVE WAR ” 


C t 


259 


I shall go ahead! And in resuming the march, after this brief rest, it is 
to you, youths of Italy, youths of the offices and of athletic contests, 
youths in years and youths in spirit, youths who belong to the gener- 
ation to whom destiny has assigned the making of history, it is to you 
that I raise my cry of greeting, confident that within your ranks it will 
find a resounding echo and abundant sympathy. 

The cry is a word which I would never have pronounced in normal 
times but which today I raise loudly, with unrestrained voice, without 
reservations, and with a sure faith: a fearful and fascinating word: 
War! (In Diuturna, pp. 1-5.) 


No. 2. Long Live War! 

Three cheers for the War! May I be permitted to raise this cry? 
Even today when so many who willed the War or pretended to will it 
are obstinately silent, draw in their horns, or worse still, in their baseness 
and foolishness are chanting hymns in homage to a slimy and plebeian 
tendency of which they are afraid and in which they miserably join. 

Therefore, three cheers for the War, for the irresistible and great act of 
this glowing young Italy; for the War not wanted by the dark multitude 
of the overly simple and badly twisted; for the War waged by the pro- 
digious effort of the spirit that revived the profound meaning of our 
race; and for the War that was won. The War I wanted, waged accord- 
ing to the best of my ability, defended, am defending, and shall defend 
as long as I live. Three cheers for Italy’s War, noble and beautiful 
above all, with its five thousand dead who are our surest wealth. 

And three cheers also for war in general. It is cursed in word and 
deed by a herd of bastards and. fools and infinitely blind and ignorant 
multitudes, nevertheless the adorable facts will not change their form 
nor their onward march. War, a physical and spiritual fact combined, 
cannot fail to exist In a world which has always seen it and always will; 
and moreover a world in which everything from the act of thought to 
that of undertaking and accomplishing the slightest deed of free action, 
is struggle and war against something or somebody. 

The instinct of war is in human nature, together with all the other 
instincts that make up man’s specific personality and that determine 
his every choice, which reason, the most subtle instinct, but sanctions, 
as everyone knows. And to this fact which might justify war only as a 
fatality must be added another, which makes us love it, that war is also 
one of the most fruitful mystic manifestations. Like a storm that re- 
lieves and refreshes nature when it is charged with electricity and full 
of bad vapors, war comes and stirs up in society and in man the putrid 
sediment of hatreds accumulated by the competitions, the base calcu- 
lations and the gross and beastly habits of the world. It arouses in 
the soft and sleepy individual mind those flying energies which without 
war only the privileged person knows who lives the life of thought and 



26 o “FUTURISM AND FASCISM” 

dreams. It is creative of new values, a sower of seeds. War, that brings 
grief to hearts otherwise closed, that leads to risks and abysses, that 
puts death before all our eyes, is the great revealer of the most jealously 
hidden truths. For only at the sight of death does the soul of man go 
deep and awake in its simplest essence; it is exalted in heroism or it is 
spent in the ignominy for wnich it is made and where no one^ without 
the irresistible event would have cast it. W ar is justice, nobility and 
brotherly pity. This is not to say that it should be waged because of 
this or that person’s will. Like all profound natural phenomena it has 
its hour and its point; and each people knows this and obeys when 
the time comes. I say these familiar things which many however would 
forget, because amid the common abasement I like to uphold a flame of 
conscience that is not mortified by the wave of vain pratde^ and drunken 
threats. Also, if ever the era of a perfectly pacific and idiotic paradise 
should begin (though this is quite impossible), I wish the illiterate 
apostles of universal camaraderie to know whom they should assassinate. 


No. 3. “ Futurism and Fascism ” 

(F. T. Marinetti has gathered a number of his writings from the last 
fifteen years into a volume under the above title. Futurism, of which he 
is the recognized leader, was a political movement as well as an artistic 
movement long before fascism and even before the war. In 1919 
Alarinetti was as prominent in Milan fascism as Mussolini was, but 
when a year later fascism turned monarchist and Catholic, he withdrew 
his support temporarily. Most of the futurists, however, continued to 
be prominent in the fascist ranks though they are much less important 
today and less representative of the movement than they were 
originally.) 


“ The Futurists are the ‘ mystics of action.’ (1909) ” 

“The cult of the past and mercantilism in art; these are the two 
terrible plagues that are devastating our country. 

In our struggle we systematically scorn every form of obedience, 
docility, and imitation; we scorn sedentary tastes and prudent slug- 
gishness ; w'e combat the majorities corrupted by power and we spit on 
current and traditional opinion as on all commonplaces of morals and 
philosophy. 

In the literary field we uphold the ideal of a great and strong scientific 
literature, which, free from all and every classicism and pedantic purism, 
will magnify the most recent discoveries, the new intoxication of speed 
and the celestial life of aviators. 

Our poetry is poetry essentially and totally rebelling against all used 
forms. The tracks of verse must be torn up and the bridges of things 



FUTURISM AND FASCISM’^ 261 

already said must be blasted and the locomotives of our inspiration 
must be started toward the coming, toward the boundless fields of 
the New and the Future! Better a splendid disaster than a monotonous 
race daily re-run! We have already put up too long with the station 
masters of poetry, the conductors of scanning and the stupidly punctual 
time-tables of prosody. 

In politics, we are as far from internationalist and anti-patriotic so- 
cialism, the ignoble upholder of the rights of the belly, as vre are from 
timid and clerical conservatism, symbolized by slippers and bed- 
warmers. 

Every liberty and every progress in the great circle of the nation! 

We uphold patriotism and militarism; we sing hymns to war, the 
wwld’s only hygiene, the superb conflagration of enthusiasm and gen- 
erosity, the noble bath of heroism without which the races fall asleep in 
the idle egoism, in the economic urge to ^ arrive,’ and in niggardliness of 
mind and will. 

We scorn and fight against the tyranny of love which especially among 
Latin peoples saps the energies of men of action. We fight against 
rancid sentimentalism, the obsession for adultery and feminine con- 
quests in the novel, the theatre and in life. 

All these ardent and dynamic ideas repel and exasperate the public; 
but we futurists make merry over it, for we fear only the facile appro- 
bations and insipid praises of the mediocre. 

We are convinced that nothing is more easy and more despicable 
too than public approval, soliciting coarse and traditional tastes. Hence 
we seek the approval only of our own great futurist ideal and of the 
hostile public we ask nothing but to be hissed. . . . 

To all our ancient Romans, to all our medieval Florentines, and to 
all our fallen Venetians, we prefer the inhabitants of Trieste; for their 
beautiful patriotic impatience will not fail before long, I hope, to set 
fire to our powder magazine. . . . While the passMsts reprove us for 
blowing all traditions into the air, the false tomorrow-ists call us reaction- 
aries for our patriotism and for our love of war. To both we reply that 
it is impossible to make resolute progress in the future without main- 
taining our personal hygiene of daily strife and our collective hy- 
giene of decennial blood baths. In our blood we nourish the princi- 
pal hatred that the Italians of the twentieth century feel, hatred for 
Austria. . . . 

When the internationalists exalt peace, it is the worst in their blood 
(the trembling and decaying part) that speaks in them. To invoke 
peace among the peoples does not mean to be men of the future but 
simply to castrate the races and to carry on intensive cultivation of 
baseness. Who can deny that a strong man breathe much more freely, 
eats much better and sleeps much more soundly after having slapped 
and knocked down an enemy? Who can deny that the word man and 



262 “FUTURISM AND FASCISM” 

tJie word Bghter are svnonvnao^s' Hence we conclude that when we 
speak of war it is the better part of our blood, the futurist part that speaks 

in us. . • T-r 1 j 

Futurism is distinctly separate from anarchic ideas. The latter, deny- 
ing the principle of human evolution, simply ends its parabolic thrust at 
the ideal and universal peace and at the stupid paradise made up of 
embracings in the open fields and of waving palms. \\ e on the other 
hand assert as the absolute principle of futurism the continuous becom- 
ing of man. We regard the hypothesis of a friendly fusion of peoples as 
overcome and admit but one hygiene for the w'orld war. The far-off 
goal of anarchy, namely, a sweet affeciionateness, the sister of baseness, 
appears to us as an ugly gangrene leading people toward agony. . . .” 

(1910) 

“ The parliamentary system is almost everywhere a wasted form. It 
gave us a few good results; created the illusory participation of the 
majority in the government. I say illusory because it is a proven fact 
that people cannot and will never be represented by representatives 
that they do not know how' to select. The people therefore, always 
remains outside the government. But on the other hand, it is precisely to 
the parliamentary system that the people owes its own existence. The 
pride of the masses has been increased by the elective regime. The 
individual’s stature has been raised by the idea of representation but 
this idea has completely falsified the evaluation of intelligence, exag- 
gerating beyond measure the prestige of eloquence. This unhappy result 
is being aggravated day by day. 

Hence I look forward with pleasure to the aggressive entrance of 
women into parliaments. Where could we find a more impatient and 
effective dynamite? Almost all the European parliaments are but 
noisy henhouses, mangers and gutters. Their essential principles are: 
(i) money, the corrupter; and slyness, the ensnarer, which serve to 
win a seat in parliament; (2) prattling elc^uence, a grandiose falsifica- 
tion of ideas, the triumph of high sounding phrases, negro tom-toms 
and the deeds of windmills. These gross elements give an absolute 
power, through the parliamentary system, to the horde of lawyers. As 
you well know, lawyers resemble each other in all countries. They are 
beings Intimately tied to all that is mean and futile. They are spirits 
that see only the little daily fact and that are absolutely incapable of 
handling great general ideas, of conceiving the clashes and fusions of 
races, and the flaming flight of the ideal over Individuals and peoples. 
TTiey arc merchants of arguments, prostituted brains, shops for subtle 
ideas and chiselled syllogisms. As a result of the parliamentary system, 
an entire nation is at the mercy of these fabricators of justice, who with 
the pliable tool of the law busily set traps for fools. 

Hence, let us hasten to give women the right to vote. This is more- 



FUTURISM AND FASCISM 263 

over the extreme and absolutely logical conclusion of the ideal of democ- 
racy and of universal suffrage as it was conceived by Jean Jacques 
Rousseau and by the other makers of the French Revolution. Let the 
women hasten with lightning rapidity to make this grand proof of the 
total animalization of politics. We who have a profound disgust for 
professional politicians are happy to abandon the parliamentary system 
to the artful contrivances of women; for it Is for the women that the 
noble task is reserved of killing it once and for all. No, I am very care- 
ful not to be Ironical; I am speaking very seriously. Woman, as she has 
been formed by our contemporary society, cannot help but Increase the 
splendor of the principle of corruption which is inseparable from the 
principle of the vote. . . . 

Very well then, I confess to you that we strong futurists in the face of 
so intoxicating a spectacle have suddenly felt ourselves detached from 
women, who have become all at once too terrestrial, or better, have be- 
come a symbol of the earth that we must abandon. We have often 
dreamed of being able some day to create our sons mechanically, as a 
fruit of pure will, a synthesis of all the laws w-hlch science is about 
to discover.’^ 

(Naples — June 26, 1910) 

A Discourse on the Beauty and Necessity of Violence 

The whole present system of order is absolutely worm-eaten, reac- 
tionary, Ineffective, blockheaded and often criminal. 

Abolish it then as soon as possible. 

At best every citizen ought to know how to defend himself. The 
state ought to intervene only in exceptional cases to defend an individual. 
The principle of free fist fights, tempered and restricted by fines, already 
exists in America and England. Seditions and crowd agitations when 
they are absolutely absurd and without the least bit of real justifica- 
tion should be thwarted, suppressed and extinguished, but without 
military intervention. A few powerful streams of water by the fire 
department are sufficient. If the conflagration should take on enormous 
proportions It means that there is much dry wood to burn and that all 
of it should burn. The fire departments should then retire with their 
pumps and leave absolute liberty for the flames. It is absurd that the 
state should continually intervene to defend the boor, the sluggish and 
the greedy cretin who allows himself to be caught by the usual tricks of 
the game. This greedy boor is much more disgusting than the robber 
himself. We have no compassion for the other classes of sluggish and 
fat citizens who are lacking in vital a^lity and whom I would call 
library baboons. The library baboon and the baboon of the field ought 
to disappear. To defend them against possible aggression is nothing 
but immorality. . . . 

Courage is the prime and essential matter, in order that, according to 



264 FUTURISM AND FASCISM’^ 

the great futurist hope, ail authorities, all rights, all powers be brutally 
stripped from the dead and dying and given to young men between 
twenty and forty years of age. 

I propose tl'ie abolition of tne present police, and to replace them with 
a body of picked citizens highly remunerated and not niinnerous who will 
intervene only in exceptional u^nig especially tne weigriit of their 

authority and never that of nandcufts. 

I propose, besides, some real scnoois of physical courage, to enable 
early adolescents to face with self-reliance and to overcome any danger 
without ever asking aid and without counting on the public force. 
Such courage, once become a deep-grained habit, will notably decrease 
the acts of aggression which inevitably in a country of brave men would 
tend to disappear. 

Our futurist principles are the love of progress, of liberty, of danger, 
propaganda for courage and daily heroism. ... 

But^ we artists are not the so-called intellectuals. We are, above all, 
beating hearts, bundles of vibrant nerves, instinctive beings, governed 
only by the divine intoxicating intuition and believing ourselves to be 
as we are all of us, kindled by the so-called sacred fire. 

... To youth we ascribe all rights and all authority which we deny 
and seek to wrest brutally from the old, the dying and the dead. 

Futurism thus proclaims the necessary intervention of ^ artists in 
public affairs, to make governing at last a disinterested art in place of 
what it is, a pedantic science of thievery. But I already hear you talk- 
ing of our technical inexperience. Forget it! Remember that the Italian 
race is really capable of producing nothing but great artists and great 
poets, who can certainly very easily instruct themselves rapidly by a 
few months obsen'^ation of the parliamentary machinery. I believe 
that the parliamentaiyr system, a fallacious and faltering political insti- 
tution, is destined inevitably to perish. I believe that Italian politics will 
inevitably witness the day of its agony if it does not listen to substituting 
artists or creative geniuses, for the class of lawyers or disintegrating and 
mercantile geniuses, that have monopolized it to the present, revealing 
their own specific function beyond all measure, which consists in 
thoroughly exploiting and selling their brains and their "words. . . . 

We have at last reached the profound conviction that everything is 
becoming more complicated, and that every theoretical, demonstrative 
and administrative simplification is illusory and that absolute order 
in political and social matters is absurd. We have reached the neces- 
sity of accepting in us and outside us the concomitance of the most con- 
tradictory elements. 

The people can never renounce the liberties it has won to any force 
or any will whatsc^ver. . . * These individual liberties which are rap- 
idly growing and developing into a possible and desirable anarchy must 
coexist with a principle of authority, which in turn, in order to save 
liberties severally, tends to destroy all collectively. Hence there is a 



FUTURISM AND FASCISM” 265 

concomitance as well as a salutary struggle between hostile principles^ 
just as there is among the diverse elements that compose human blood. 
Thus Italy must always keep alive a double fervor^ a possible proletarian 
revolution and a possible war. , . . 

We now believe that the concept of historical evolution in circles is 
infantile, by which according to the dreams of many myopian imperial- 
ists, we are destined to return to a form of tyranny and to a supine 
slavery. . - . The imperialists seem to ignore, for example, the absolute 
novelty and exceptional importance which I ascribe to the most im- 
portant event in the last hundred years. I mean the liberty to strike 
which the proletariat has mechanically won, a liberty all the stronger 
because it is not recognized by law, a liberty w^hich no Napoleon can 
ever abolish. . . . 

From all this we obviously conclude that violence has today become 
the best condition of real health for a people. Order, pacifism, modera- 
tion, the diplomatic and reformist spirit, are they not perhaps arterio- 
sclerosis, old age and death? It is only by violence that the idea of 
justice, now ruined, can be reestablished not as the fateful principle 
that consists in the right of the strongest but as that hygienic-sound 
principle that consists in the right of the most courageous and disinter- 
ested, Starting from this principle I may immediately satisfy those 
among you who are most insistent in the desire and need for dogmatic 
precision, by establishing the idea that the good is, according to us, 
everything that encourages and develops the physical, intellectual and 
instinctive activities of man, urging them to their maximum splendor, 
while evil is all that diminishes and interferes with the development of 
these activities. 

Just as pacifism and the fear of war have created our painful political 
slavery, so the horror of violence has made a ridiculous puppet out of 
the Italian citizen, deformed by the degenerate forms of conflict that 
reply to a blow with a complaint or a formal satisfaction. . . . 

How many times in the last ten years of life at Milan in which I have 
daily studied the ebb and flow of Italian socialism, attentively reading 
the reports of all its committees, as the most interesting and painful of 
books, how many times have I blushed as an Italian, I repeat as an 
Italian, to see huge masses of workers aroused by the mcBt legitimate 
grievances and by a magnificent desire for greater liberty, how many 
times have these huge masses of the people been suddenly seized with 
the most foolish collective fright, at the sound of the four insolent notes 
of a policeman’s whistle. . • . 

But I also hear a formidable cry bursting from this multitude, petri- 
fied by courage, replying to the whistle: * Italians, do not flee! Out of 
our sublime love of danger we accept a bloody strife under the shining 
stars of Italy which compel us not to retreat! . 

For to the present esthetics of filthy lucre we oppose — and let it come, 
let it come — an esthetics of vidence and of blood! 



266 “FUTURISM AND FASCISM’^ 

(1910) 

On the facades of museums, academies, libraries, and universities, 
we ought to read the following infamous principles written with the 
plaster of imbecility; 

You no longer think! 

You no longer paint! 

You no longer construct! 

No one can ever improve on the masters ! 

AM originality whatsoet'er is forbidden! 

Banish follies and extravagances! You must copy, copy, copy I 

To win the paradise of art you must imitate the lives of our saints! 

And ever the doors of academies, museums, libraries and universities 
we write with the heroic charcoal of office stoves: 

TO THE EARTHQUAKE 
THEIR ONLY ALLY 

THE FLTURISTS DEDICATE 
THESE RUINS OF ROME AND ATHENS 

Poets, painters, sculptors, musicians, you must fight . • . against the 
principle of inertia and slumber. For the world needs only heroism; 
pardon, as we do, the bloody and lawless deed of the student of Palermo, 
Lidonni, who avenged himself contrary to law against a tyrannic pro- 
fessor. The passe-\^l professors are the only ones responsible for this 
murder, those passe-m professors who seek to suffocate the indomitable 
energy of Italian youth in fetid subterranean channels. When, oh 
when, will there be an end of this castrating of the spirits that must create 
the future! . . . We must hurry to re-make everything. We must go 
against the current. Soon will come the moment when we can no 
longer be concent to defend our ideas with our bare hands and fists, 
wffien we m.ust begin the assault in the name of intelligence, the artistic 
assault, the literary assault on that glorified crust of tyrant professors/* 

(1911, repeated in 1918) 

They say we are a people superior to all others for our elastic and 
creative genius and for our resistant muscular youth, but, unfortunately, 
poverty-stricken. 

No. The Italian people is not poor. We futurists assert that the 
Italian people is the richest in the world, for it possesses incalculable, 
unutilized capital, made up of the enormous patrimony of ancient worts 
of art piled up in its museums. We propose without further ado that 
the government sell this patrimony of art, gradually and prudently. 
Since the Uffizi and the Pitti Galleries alone were evaluated at a billion, 
Italy would in a few years be rich enough; 



FUTURISM AND FASCISM ” 267 

(i) to have the biggest military fleet in the world; (2) to have an 
army four times the strength of its present one; (3) to have the first mer- 
chant marine In the world; (4) to have a great system of Inland navi- 
gation; (5) to intensify decidedly all its existing industries and immedi- 
ately create the missing ones; (6) to develop agriculture to the state of 
maximum return, and make all the malaria zones sanitary; (7) to wipe 
out illiteracy completely; (8) to abolish all taxes for at least twenty 
years. 

We foresee all the objections and we can meet them. The sale of our 
patrimony of art, far from lessening our prestige, will prove to the 
world that a young people, sure of its own future, is able to face all its 
problems, transform its dead wealth into living forces and like an aristo- 
cratic intelligence deny itself all vain pomp and devote its own gold 
to industry. 

It will also be highly patriotic, this deed by which Italy, bursting tra- 
ditional and sentimental old chains, will transform her old textiles and 
marbles into useful, swift and lordly steel And, on the other hand, our 
ancient works of art, sold to America, England, Russia and France, will 
become the most effective advertisements of the creative genius of 
our race. 

An inexhaustible genius this, for it shows itself today In our great 
and victorious improvised army, in our military mathematics and in 
our Garibaldist heroism, an army accustomed to war and prepared for 
it for more than forty years. Our heroes of the Carso, the Isonzo and 
the Trentino have surpassed a hundred times the greatness of all the 
Roman heroes. Hence we no longer live in our past; we are no longei 
merely ‘ sons of great men our present prestige guarantees us an un- 
limited future greatness. 

We are the most artistic people on the earth. No one therefore can 
doubt that after having won great military power in the world, we 
shall also win an absolute primacy in art. Our glorious Renaissance will 
be surpassed by the Italian art of tomorrow,” 

(November 1914) 

Our immediate program is a desperate struggle against Italian posse- 
ism in all its repugnant forms: archeology, academicism, senility, quiet- 
ism, poltroonery, pacifism, pessimism, nostalgia, sentimentalism, erotic 
obsession, tourist industry, etc. Our ultra-violent nationalism is anti- 
clerical, anti-socialist, anti-traditional and is based on the inexhaustible 
vigor of Italian blood and wages war on the cult of our ancestors who, 
far from cementing our race, make it anemic and wanton. . . . Futur- 
ism ... is an atmosphere of the vanguard; it is the battle cry of all 
the innovators, of the intellectual free lances of the world; it is the love 
of the new; the impassioned art of velocity, the systematic defamation of 
the antique, the old, the slow, the erudite and the professorial; it is a 



268 


“FUTURISM AND FASCISM” 

DCw way of looking at the world, a new reason for loving life, an^ en- 
thusiastic glorification of scientific discoveries and modern mechanism, 
a banner of youth, of strength, of originality, at any cost; ... it is a 
box of dynamite for a!! the venerated ruins. . • . ^ 

Futurism is the reinforcement and defense of Italian genius (creation, 
improvization) against cultural obsession (museums, libraries), the soli- 
darity of Italian innovators, against the clique of academics, oppor- 
tunists, plagiarists, commentators, professors, and hotel keepers, the 
preparation of an atmosphere favmrable to inno\ ators, the temerity 
to face an infinite Italian progress, heroic disinterestedness in giving 
Italy more force, courage, light, novelty and elasticity in the world, 
an order of march and battle plus our arms at our shoulders never 
to retreat. 

Futurism attempts to introduce life brutally into art, to fight the old 
ideal of the esthetes, static, decorative, effeminate, precious, shy,^ and 
hating action. In the last thirty years Europe was taken sick with a 
ruinous socialistic, anti-patriotic and internationalistic intellectualism 
which separates body and mind, vaunts a stupid hypertrophy of the 
brain, teaches pardon for offenses, announces universal peace and the 
disappearance of war, whose horrors would give place to battles of ideas. 
Against this intellectualism of German origin, futurism rushes in exalt- 
ing instinct, force, courage, sport and war. Artists, at last alive, no 
longer seated on the scornful summits of estheticism, want to cooperate 
as workers and soldiers in world progress. ... 

Dynamic and aggressive futurism is being fully realized today in the 
great World War which I alone foresaw and glorified before it broke out. 
The present war is the finest futurist poem that has as yet appeared; 
futurism meant precisely the breaking in of war upon art, creating 
such phenomena as futurist evenings, most effective propaganda for 
courage. Futurism was the militarization of innovating artists. Today 
we are witnessing an immense futurist explosion of dynamic and 
aggressive pictures, into which we soon want to enter and display 
ourselves. 

Plastic dynamism, pluritonal music without structure, art of noises 
and words expressed with freedom, are the most natural artistic expres- 
sions of this futurist hour. Bombardments, armored cars, trenches, 
artillery duels, charges, electrified barb wiring, have nothing to do with 
passM&t poetry, classicist, traditional, archeological, georgic, nostalgic, 
and erotic (Baudelaire, Mallarme, Verlaine, Cardued, Pascoli, d’An- 
nunzio). This pacifist poetry is buried. . . . 

The War, intensified futurism, will never kill war as the passMsts 
hope but will kill passe~ism. The war is the culmination and perfect syn- 
thesis of progress (aggressive velocity plus violent simplificarion of ef- 
forts toward well-being). W''ar is a lightning stroke of courage, of 
energy and intelligence, falling on every one. A compulsory school of 



“ FUTURISM AND FASCISM ” 269 

ambition and heroism; fulness of life and complete freedom in surrender 
to one’s country. 

For a poor and prolific nation war is a business proposition; to pur- 
chase the needed land by the oversupply of blood. . . . The war will 
exhaust all the country’s enemies: diplomats, professors, philosophers, 
archeologists, critics, cultural obsessions, Greek, Latin, history, senility, 
museums, libraries, tourist industry'. The war will develop gymnastics, 
sport, schools of practical agriculture, commerce and industry. The 
war will rejuvenate Italy, will enrich it with men of action, will force 
it to live no longer on its past, its ruins, and its gentle climate but on its 
own national forces.” 


(December 1915) 

“ After having seen the Italian people, ‘ that most mobile of all peo- 
ples,’ free itself futuristically by a sword stroke from the lurid old armor 
of Giolitti, we are now seeing how in the busy streets of Milan, the 
Italian people, that seemed poisoned by pacifism, is able to face with 
pride this noble, useful and hygienic spilling of Italian blood. 

All this confirms us once more in the belief that no people can equal: 
(i) the creative genius of the Italian people; (2) the improvising elas- 
ticity of which the Italians always give proof; (3) the physical force, 
agility and resistance of the Italians; (4) the impetus, violence and des- 
perateness with which the Italians are able to fight; (5) the patience 
and methodical calculation of the Italians in making war; (6) the lyri- 
cism and moral nobility of the Italian nation in nourishing itself by 
blood and money. 

Italians 1 You must build Italian pride on the indisputable superiority 
of the Italian people in everything. This pride was one of the essential 
principles of our original futurist manifestations, that is, of six years 
ago when first and alone (while irredentism was in torment and the 
nationalist party had not yet been born) we invoked war violently in 
the theatres and market places, as the only hygiene, the only moral 
educator, the only swift motor of progress.” 

(May 1919) 

“ In the manifesto of the futurist political party I urged: ‘ the trans- 
formation of Parliament by an equal participation of industrialists, ag- 
riculturalists, engineers and merchants in the government of the country. 
The minimum age of eligibility for a deputy should be reduced to twenty- 
two years. A minimum of lawyer deputies (always opportunists) and 
a minimum of professor deputies (always reactionaries). A parliament 
freed of weaklings and rabbles. The abolition of the Senate. If this 
rational and practical parliament should not give good results, we shall 



270 FUTURISM AND FASCISM’’ 

abolish it and pot in a technical government without parliament, a gov- 
ernment composed of twenty experts. We will replace the Senate with 
an advisor}" assembly composed of twenty young men under thirty. In 
the place of a parliament of incompetent orators and sick scholars, 
checked by a Senate of dying men, we will have a government of twenty 
experts stimulated by an assembly of young men under thirty.’ 

The futurist Volt immediately entered upon the difEculties in the way 
of realizing a technical government in an article from which I quote: 
^ Wt shall abolish Parliament, but many will ask, what will we put in its 
place? The reply is at hand. We will substitute a parliament based on 
representatives of agricultural, industrial and workers’ syndicates. 
Syndica! representation will be the basis of the futurist technical state.’ ” 

(October 1919, at the fascist congress of Florence.) 

I approve unconditionally, in the name of futurism and the futurist 
Italians, the whole program of the Fasci di Combattimento which has 
been expounded by my friend Fabbri. However, I find several serious 
gaps in this program to which I draw your attention. 

Fascisii! There is no greater peril for Italy than the black peril. 
The Italian people that has been able to venture, will, and carry out 
the immense heroic and victorious effort of the great war, . , . would 
fail in its mission if it were not able energetically to free this beautiful 
peninsula, bubbling with life, from the deadly plague of the papacy. 
We must demand, will, and impose the expulsion of the papacy, or better 
still to use a more precise expression, its ‘ devaticanization.’ 

Continuing in the analysis of the program of the Fasci di Combatti- 
mento^ I find the abolition of the Senate, for which a national technical 
council is to be substituted. Very well; I maintain that the concept of 
technicians is very important but it does not suffice. The Senate 
represents in the history of peoples a constant deference to the wisdom 
of the aged, summoned to put a brake on the exercise of power, to make 
the government's proposals mature and direct its decisions. . . , 

The technical council that is to replace the Senate must therefore be 
composed of very young men, not yet thirty. I insist on this, since it 
has been customary in Italy to call young men to power and to regard 
a man of fifty-five as very young and virile. Salandra cries: Forward, 
young men! But with him they all fear young men, and put a forty- 
year old in quarantine as having cholera, a fifty-year old as a dynamiter, 
and regard a sixty-year old as a daring fellow almost mature enough to 
govern Italy. , . . 

Italy once freed (by means of the dynamic force of a stimulatorium of 
really young men, the patriotic flame of the ardkt, the schools of physi- 
cal courage and of heroism, the free expositions of creative genius, and 
the proletariat of genial Italians) will finally give its greatest flood of 
Italian light to the world/’ 



FUTURISM AND FASCISM 271 

(November 1919, from an election speech when he and Mussolini were 
the fascist candidates of Milan.) 

We do not believe that the Italian race should dominate the world 
by its industrial forces, but we are convinced that it will dominate by 
the indisputable force of its creative geniuses. Do not forget, O Italians, 
the great and genial spirits of d^Annunzio and Mussolini, who at this 
moment synthesize Italy, I vindicate the rights of genius and the rights 
of intelligence in all its forms against the pretended dictatorship of cal- 
loused hands. To speak of a levelling communism to a race full of 
individuals, to a people full of inventors, is a criminal absurdity. 

So they hope to decapitate Italy? It is absurd! Against those who 
sabotage our great victory, against all who put brakes on the un- 
measured future of the most genial people on earth, fascism arises with 
its revolutionary force, seeking every liberty and every progress, and ad- 
mitting no glorification of mediocrity and idiocy/^ 

(December 1919, written in a Milan jail where he was imprisoned with 
Mussolini and several others for leading armed bands against the 
state just before the elections.) 

Yes! Put the artists in power! The vast proletariat of the genial 
shall govern. The most sacrificed, the most worthy of proletariats. 
All are weary and deluded. It does not yield. Its genius will soon 
explode over Italy and over the world spreading immense red wings 
of cheering artistic force, purifying and pacifying. The proletariat of 
the genial, once in the government, will realize a free theatre for all and 
the great futurist aerial theatre. Music will reign over the world. 
Every square will have its great instrumental and vocal orchestra. Thus 
there will be fountains of harmony which day and night will spring from 
musical genius and will play in the heavens, coloring, sweetening, in- 
vigorating, and refreshing the hard, dark, trivial, and hectic rhythm of 
daily life. In the place of night work we shall have night art. Squads of 
musicians will take their turns in magnifying a hundredfold the splen- 
dor of our days and the sweetness of our nights. 

The proletariat of the genial alone will be capable of undertaking the 
prudent, gradual, and world-wide sale of our patrimony of art, accord- 
ing to the legal draft which we made nine years ago. This spiritual 
wheat and coal will produce admiration for us even in the radest peoples. 
Our museums sold to the world will become a dynamic transoceanic ad- 
vertisement of genius. 

The proletariat of the genial, cooperating with the development of the 
industrial machinist, will attain that maximum of salary and minimum 
of manual labor, which without diminishing production will give to all 
intelligence, liberty to think, create and enjoy artistically. 

The futurist revolution that will put artists in power does not promise 
terrestrial paradises. Certainly it can not suppress the human torment 



“FUTURISM AND FASCISM 



y ? 


that marks the rising force of our race. The artists, tireless exponents of 
this feverish toil, will succeed in easing the pain. They will solve the 
problem of weli-beiog in the only way it can be solved, that is, spirit- 
ually, • . . 

Every brain ought to have its palette and its musical mstrument to 
color and give lyric accompaniment to every least and humblest act of 
life. Ordinary life is too heavy, austere, monotonous, materialistic, 
badly ventilated, and if not strangled at least fettered. In awaiting the 
realization of our grandiose aerial futurist theatre, we propose a vast 
project of daily free concerts in every quarter of the city, picture theatres, 
reading rooms, books and newspapers, absolutely free. We shall develop 
the spiritual life of the people and shall magnify a hundredfold its 
capacity to dream. Thanks to us the time will come in which life will 
no longer be merely a life of bread and work, nor a life of leisure, but a 
life in which there will be life-work-of-art. Every man will live his best 
possible romance.” (Fulurismo e Fascismo: pages 24-27, 46-49, 56-73, 
78-79, 90-97, 99-100, 145-146, 187-189, 195-196, 199-200, 218-220.) 



PART II 


International Relations 
AND THE New Roman Empire 

No. 4. Mussolini on Imperialism 

What is happening today is truly fantastic ! On all sides they are 
crying against Italian imperialism. ... It seems as though the im- 
perialists in this low, sad world are all Italians. All this is an enormous 
stupidity. Italian imperialism does not exist. Nor does English imper- 
ialism exist. Nor French. We must understand each other once for 
all about this word imperialism. Imperialism is the eternal and im- 
mutable law of life. At bottom it Is but the need, the desire, and the 
will for expansion which every living, healthy individual or people has 
in itself. It is the means by which it is practiced that distinguishes one 
imperialism from another, both among individuals and among peoples. 
Imperialism is not necessarily, as is believed, aristocratic and military. 
It may be democratic, pacific, economic, or spiritual. 

In a certain sense President Wilson, and it is not difficult to prove 
this, is the greatest and most fortunate of all imperialists. 

Now I do not cry against French imperialism. . . . The truth is that 
France not only wants to maintain her position in Europe and in the 
world, but by the victory wants to utilize and fortify it. She renounces 
nothing. How silly this democratic ideal, this self-styled Italian demo- 
cratic ideal, appears in the face of this imperialism of republican France, 
which does not renounce the famous trinity — liberty, equality, frater- 
nity — but seeks to guarantee for herself the foundations and sources of 
her life. 

I shall not cry against English imperialism. . . against Lloyd 
George and against his friends who do not want to hear of freedom of the 
seas in the Boche sense, who do not want to hear of restoring the German 
colonies, who still less intend to renounce English naval supremacy 
and who are prepared to claim a sizable war indemnity. . . . 

Either what the English and French are doing is imperialism and then 
It is necessary to rise up against theirs as they rise against ours, though 
it be the least voracious and dangerous of any; or else the French and 
English politics which at present has the alm«t unanimous support 
of the respective nations, is simply and prudently national, and Aea 
it is time to stop condemning Italy and only Italy because it is doing 
what the others are dmng. . . . 



274 MUSSOLINI ON INTERNATIONALISM 

I hear someone sayinc to me: and the democratic War: I reply that 
the War has a!readv”attained its democratic and mtra-democraPc aims. 
The central empires which were the bulwark of Europe^ reaction have 
been overthrown and in their place republics are arising. Upheavals 
more radical and democratic than these were not possible. But 1 ask 
myself: will these democracies be pacific? . . „ . , 

Those who believe they can w’in the sympathies of the Croatians by 
abandoning cities and regions that always have been strictly Italian, are 
much mistaken. If you yield Dalmatia, the Croatians will be hostile 
to vou because of Fiume. If you yield Flume they will want Trieste, arid 
if you should be inclined to yield Trieste do not imagine that you will 
have satisfied that tribe; it wants to come down from the Carso Giulio, 
camp at Cividale and at Udine, push on to the banks of the Tagliamento, 
if not to the Piave. It is the fertility of our plains and the blue of our 
skies that have for centuries aroused the covetousness of barbarians. 

League of Nations, disarmament, arbitration, all this is now an ideal 
patrimony of peoples, but these coming legal institutions must consecrate 
our rights, not violate them. . . {Popolo d Italia, January i, 1919- 
In Diuturna, pp. 227-232.) 

“ The bitter bestial wrath of Nitti is provoked by his foolish fear of 
the Allies. This man presents a base and trembling Italy before the 
synod of wolves, foxes, and jackals of Paris. And he thinks _thus_ to 
obtain pity. And he believes by making himself tiny, by diminishing 
himself and prostrating himself, he will obtain something. The opposite 
is easier. It is easier to disarm our ‘ terrible ’ Allies by showing them our 
teeth as soon as they laugh at us and do not take us seriously when w^e 
whimper.” (Popolo dltalia, September 15, 1919. In DiutUTTia, pp. 

257-259-) 


No. 5. Mussolini on Internationalism 

“Humanity is still and always an abstraction of time and space; 
men are still not brothers, do not want to be and evidently can not be. 
Peace is hence absurd, or rather it is a pause in war. There is some- 
thing that binds man to his destiny of struggling, either against his 
fellows or himself. The motives for the stru^le may change indefinitely, 
they may be economic, religious, political, sentimental, but the legend 
of Cain and Abe! seems to be the inescapable reality, while ‘brother- 
hood ’ is a fable which men listen to during the bivouac and the 
truce. . . . 

Material interests hurl men against each other fiercely, men who 
claim to be ready to take in the whole human race in the most loving 
embrace! 

But of what avail is it now to enter into the ‘ merits ’ of the question? 
The republicans are right from a legal and moral point of view, but 



MUSSOLINI ON INTERNATIONALISM 275 

the socialists act a la Prussian, that is, they practice the right of the 
stronger. That zone is entirely theirs. These are the happy (!) coun- 
tries where all are socialists. In this red desert a republican oasis is 
intolerable. . . . 

Political rivalry is fused "with economic interests and men who carry 
the banner of humanity do not hesitate before civil war. 

The ideal is shipwrecked by this contradiction. The Christian and 
socialist ‘ men be brothers ’ is a mask for the eternal and immutable 
^ homo homini lupus/ , . . And man will continue to be a wolf among 
wolves for a bit of land, for a trickle of water, for a crumb of bread, for 
a woman’s kiss, for a necessity or a caprice; he will continue to ignore 
others and to ignore himself.” (Popolo d^'Italia, March 7, 1920. In 
Diuturna^ pp. 279-281.) 

" Internationalism is an article of luxury, good for the aristocracies 
of art, banking, industry, and snobbish imbecility; in short for the bour- 
geoisie of capitalism and of socialism; but at bottom internationalism is 
an absurd fable; the great masses do not escape nor can they, and it 
is the best of fortune that they can not escape, the insuppressible datum 
of race and nation. ‘Go home to your own country!’ This is the 
formula that sums up the workers’ internationalism. 

The socialist doctrine of workers’ internationalism has evaporated 
into the air or is engraved only on tablets; it does not exist in life. Put 
workers representing various countries around the same table ^ — witness 
the Washington Conference — and you will hear the unintelligible 
clamor of a new Babel; bring laboring masses of different races into 
forced contact and you will have the story of Upper Silesia or of the 
Teschen Basin or of Trieste. 

Internationalism may be an Ideal limit; one of those ideas, that is, 
which mankind carries in its baggage in view of its long wanderings 
in remote regions; but to make it an article of faith, an absolute 
dogma, there is a long distance still to go. And those people who, like 
slaves, face history for the first time, are the most nationalist and the 
least internationalist on earth, even when they raise the emblem of the 
sickle and hammer — which then becomes the emblem of their 
pan-Slavic nationalism — ... If those who call themselves communists 
and internationalists are so fiercely anti-Italian, there is little comfort in 
trusting in the friendship of other Jugoslavians who openly profess 
nationalism.” {Popolo d'Jtalia, February i, 1921. In Diuturna, pp. 
320-324.) 

“Under the mask of the noblest ideals, decorated by the ‘immor- 
tal principles,’ covered by the whitest Iamb fleece, the fierce hoard of 
the selfish peoples bursts upon us, of those ‘ arrived ’ peoples who chase 
the proletarian people off the prohibited premises of raw materials. 
O Justice! O Humanity! O Brotherhood! In the committees, assem- 



276 THE GREATEST HUMILIATION 

blies, and speeches at Geneva, yes ! but when it is a matter of oil, of 
coal, of iron, and of territories that contain these indispensable raw 
materials, justice, humanity and brotherhood come to a sad end like the 
paper trophies on the last night of carnivaL 

And so leave us to sow our bit of wind which is our only means of 
escape from slavishness.” {Popolo d^Italm, September 27, 1921. In 
Diuturnuj pp. 358-361.) 

No. 6. Strife Is the Origin of All Things 

(Excerpts from Mussolini’s speech at Trieste, September 20, 1920. 
This speech marks the transition from^ the early radical republican 
platform of 1919 to the more nationalistic program which ^came to 
dominate fascism. The passage here cited reflects Mussolini's dis- 
illusionment over the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations.) 

Strife is the origin of all things, for life is full of contrasts; there is 
and hate, white and black, night and day, good and evil, and until 
these contrasts are reduced to an equilibrium strife will always remain 
at the root of human nature, like a supreme fatality. And on the whole 
it is well that it is so. Today strife is possible in war, in economics, 
in ideas; but the day in which there should be no more strife 
would be a day of melancholy, of the end of things, of ruin. For the 
present this day will not come. For history always presents itself like a 
changing panorama. If one pretends a return to peace, calm and tran- 
quillity, one is refuted by the current tendencies of the present dynamic 
age. One must be prepared for other surprises and other strifes. 
There will be no period of peace until the time when the peoples shall 
have abandoned themselves to a Christian dream of universal brother- 
hood and can hold out their hands to each other across oceans and 
mountains. I for my part have little faith in these ideals, but I do 
not exclude their possibility, for I exclude nothing; all things are pos- 
sible. even the impossible and absurd. But today, being today, it would 
be fallacious, perilous, criminal, to build houses on the shifting sand of 
the Christian-socialist-communist International. These ideals are 
worthy of respect, but are still very far from reality.” (Mussolini: 
Dijcorji, first edition, p. 107.) 

No. 7. The Greatest Humiliation (By Ardengo Soffici) 

“The greatest humiliation, after that of having witnessed the vogue 
of German ware among us, now happily ended, is that of seeing Europe 
tcxiay at the mercy of the Anglo-Saxon race. To see us, the ancient 
lords of all times, Italy and France (especially Italy) eternal emanators 
of the sunlight of civilization, creators of ideas, forms and civil customs 
— of all that is great and glorious in the world, hanging on the lips 
of big nobodies and of savages hardly civilized: of the English Attom^ 
and the Presbyterian Wilson! 



ON DISARMAMENT 


277 

No! Really, for my racial pride this is worse than the toad which 
Chamfort had to swallow every morning (Ardengo SofficI; Battag- 
lie fra due rnttorie, 1920, p. 44.) 

No. 8 . A Notable Service 

Nothing has given me greater satisfaction since the victorious end of 
the war than the injustice, ingratitude and spite shown us by our allies. 
Especially by those "whom we helped most. Nothing could contribute 
more to freeing us once and for all from all the ridiculous illusions to 
which we clung and which subjected us to them. 

Because of these illusions, because of this kind of admiring submission, 
Italy has never followed directly the path that its genius and its history 
pointed out for it. It has never carried on the true politics becoming 
to it. The lesson it has had has been magnificent and salutary. 

Italy is now free to choose its own way, to be itself at last; it can 
coolly look everyone straight in the eye and can achieve its own destiny 
regardless of others. The selfishness and general roguery with which 
we have found ourselves face to face has been a veritable lucky number 
for usP (Ardengo soffici: Battaglie fra due vittorie, 1920, p. 78.) 

No. 9. On Disarmament 

(The following is taken from an article by Francesca Coppola in 
Politic September 1924, re»published in an editorial in La Tribunal 
March 25, 1927, on the occasion of the last disarmament conference.) 

. . As regards disarmament, we must immediately and categori- 
cally reject the prevalent tendency to a proportional reduction of arma- 
ments of the Washington type. According to this tendency the limits 
allowed for those armaments which are at present still free — that is 
land, lighter naval and submarine and air armaments — are to be fixed 
for each power in proportion to its present forces and present needs, 
arbitrarily (and that means according to the Interest of the stronger) 
determined by international congresses. Now it is plain that under such 
a system land forces would be allowed us very much inferior to the 
French, naval forces very much inferior to the English; air forces 
inferior to both French and English; in short, a world military power 
notably inferior both to the French and the English- The consequences 
which we would derive from this arrangement are very plain: 

(1) The humiliation of our prestige and hence of our international 
standing, because of an officially recognized and established inferiority 
of Italy in the hierarchy of the great powers; 

(2) Our manifest definite and permanent military inferiority with its 
obvious danger for our security and with its- obvious lessening of our 
effective independence and of the weight of our politics not only in all 
world questions but also in thc^e of Eurcqie and the Mediterranean; 

(3) The material, definite and permanent impossibility of mcdifying 



278 AMERICAN IMPERIALISM 

the present world status at any time whatsoever according to our 
prime historical necessity, and especially the Alediterranean status in 
which Italy is literaliy kifled. This would be equivalent^ to putting 
a forced end to our necessary historic development, that is, it would be 
our historical suicide. 

Hence what should we do: Demand that eventually armament 
limits on land, sea, and air be one and the same and perfectly equal 
for all great powers already officially defined as such. Nobody, in fact, 
can pretend that a great power can officially recognize and sanction its 
own inferiority in the face of others, , not only at present but perpetually. 
This does not mean that we must immediately establish an army or an 
air force equal to the French or a fleet of light cruisers and submarines 
equal to the English, but it means that we reserve for ourselves the 
liberty and right of establishing them whenever our economic power 
permits it or when our historic necessities demand it. It means 
that we now maintain the right to an equality of position which no 
one can officially deny us, so that we may realize it in fact whenever we 
can and must- 

The advantages of this system are no less obvious than the disad- 
vantages of the other: 

(i) Our prestige of pares inter pares is maintained and reasserted; 

(3) Our military power, now by right and tomorrow in fact, equal to 
that of any other state, to guarantee our security, our independence, our 
standing in international politics; 

(3) The possibility of having a force, when the hour sounds, relative 
and adequate, or at least not too greatly inferior, to the necessities of 
Italy% standing and growth in the Mediterranean; 

(4) Practically speaking, an immediate and effective limitation im- 
posed on the military power of those who are today the stronger, but a 
purely Platonic one for us who are still far from the eventual relative 
standing wffiich is really in process of being determined.” 

No. 10. American Imperialism 

Once more in the bright light of noon the falsity of the Wilsonian 
ideology and European imbecility has been proven, especially the 
renunciatory and apologetic Italian imbecility. The League of Nations, 
established by Wilson himself at the same time that he refused a world- 
wide examination of war debts in order to carry on a financial imperialism 
over single European debtors, at the same time that he recognized the 
Monroe Doctrine (Article 21 of the Covenant), was already no longer 
the League of Nations, but an institution for American intervention in 
European affairs without a corresponding intervention mce versa, A 
few isolated individuals saw the contradiction, denounced it and were 
called enemies of the peace by Italian sexial demcxracy. And they 
were merely friends of truth and not enemies of peace, which cannot 
be served by lies. Their stand was already fascist. 



AMERICAN IMPERIALISM 


279 

The refusal of the United States, who deny all validity to the signature 
given to Versailles by their legitimate and highest representative (oh, 
the guarantees of democratic perfection!), has proved that American 
imperialism has tried to free itself even from the formal embarrassments 
of the League of Nations, thus completely robbing Wilson^s ideology 
of all content, though European brains had become generally stuffed 
with it. Thus the politics of Intervention in European affairs has re- 
mained intact: witness the Conference and Treaty for naval disarma- 
ment at Washington directed to forcing England to naval equality, and 
to renouncing her naval supremacy and alliance with Japan; the control 
and patronage of the Dawes plan in regulating German reparations (in 
relation to the conquered) ; the systematization of debts with single Al- 
lies (in relation to their ex-associates). On the other hand the politics of 
imperialism on the gigantic American continent is free from any restric- 
tions of diplomatic procedure whatsoever. Today, with American troops 
landed in Nicaragua, we can estimate the whole unhistorical absurdity 
and lying falsity of the basic League ideology. . . . 

The Nicaraguan intervention following upon the signing of a treaty 
by which Panama is dependent on the United States, is a typically im- 
perialistic intervention. It is useless to mobilize all the hypocrisies 
of the customary formulas against it and the empty indignation of 
social democracy when it speaks of independence and liberty as a priori 
rights and not as practical concerns and deserts. It is not possible to 
identify the independence and liberty of states historically with a politi- 
cal void of anarchy, thus withholding vast territories from the needs of 
organizing and productive civilization. Civilization is imperialistic; it is 
therefore an international hierarchy composed of great controlling pow- 
ers who find solutions and do not stop in the face of pretended rights and 
formal limitations; it is competition and struggle from which alone 
peoples^ rights can be born, for they must always be won and deserved. 
This imperialistic civilization is European and American and also Asiatic. 
It is, in other words, world-wide. It is the moving force of all politics; 
and especially in democratic states which deny the daily contradiction 
between the facts of their imperialistic action and the labels of the social 
democratic principles which they flaunt, as do France, England and the 
United States. Communist Russia herself denies it, which in spite of 
internal dfficulties is feverishly seeking millions of rubles to help the 
Cantonese armies and to set up their own imperialism against the Brit- 
ish, Japanese, and American, even when the latter tend toward a partial 
reciprocal elimination. 

Fascism alone in the world repudiates hyp'oerisies and lies, asserts 
their danger, their danger for peace itself, and recognizes the fact that 
the laws of world affairs are those of imperialistic civilization which 
has its own reason for being, its own history and its own morality, 
over against the deceptions of social demccracy. Fascism is not sur- 
prised at the Panama treaty and the Nicaraguan intervention, nor does 
it take recourse to that Tartufian surprise shown by the British and 



28 o 


LIFE IS BECOMING HARDER 

French press^ . . . but instead it sees in these two events one of the 
essential tendencies of United States politics and in its turn reasserts 
that the turmoils in w’hich we livCy the misunderstandings which have 
afBicted us during the aftermath of the war, the worst threats to European 
peace and, above all, European civilization hsejf are caught up m this 
monstrous equivocation weighing on world politics^ by which men try 
obscenely to preach something different from the facts and therefore 
allow a festering contradiction to grow, a corrosive of the Protestant 
Anglo-Saxon type of mind, of the fatuous French oratory and of an- 
archie Russian universaiism, repudiated only by the serious and suffer- 
ing manliness of fascism.” (From R. Forges-Davanzati; in La Tnbuna, 
January 2, 1927.) 

No. II. Lije Is Becoming Harder 

“Every day we fee! more how the economic problem, and now 
especially the monetary problem, is dominating the iife^ of every coun- 
try. . . . Solid metallic money is inexorably destroying poor paper 
money, just as the great mechanic industry of the first half of the last 
century hopelessly destroyed small domestic industrj*. . . . Now the 
good money concentrated" in the Anglo-Saxon world, the dollar and 
the pound sterling, are asserting themselves and dominating over the 
monies of all other countries, thereby gaining both an economic and a 
political position of international command, against which countries 
of poor exchanges will continually have less sure defense. A slow pres- 
sure from America and England is now directed toward suppressing 
the disparity of the various national monies which has led to incidental 
advantages for the poor money countries by their low cost of production 
and hence their ability to compete, and toward imposing on all of them a 
general adoption of the gold standard which, by levelling the value of 
money, will also level the cost of production and will restore to the rich 
countries their possibility of fully enjoying in foreign markets all the 
technical economic and financial superiority of their industries, which 
is now neutralized by this unsolved problem of exchanges. Hence we 
must count on an inexorable Anglo-Saxon pressure. . . . 

What weapon of defense has Italy against this advance of foreign 
economic tendencies, which is being encountered by her commerce 
in all the world markets? One only, and entirely a matter of will: 
saving. I mean here not only the more usual and classic Italian form 
of saving by the patient and faithful accumulation of small salaries, made 
possible by the daily sacrifices of workers, but in its more modem 
and wider technical form of a reduction of the costs of production 
and of a maximum utilization of all its raw materials and combustibles, 
to be obtained by an application of all the most progressive technical 
and economic systems of production and distribution. It is a singular 
spectacle, the state of this poor Italy that keeps up old and very 
wasteful habits of work, instead of zealously launching out into a 



THE NEW EMPIRE 


281 

thoroughgoing renovation of its principles of production. Up to the 
eve of the new regime the liberallst idea, century-old and by this time 
antiquated in almost all industrial countries of the world, maintained 
itself in Italy, expecting to find the solution of the problem of minimum 
costs in an unlimited application of the principle of free competition 
and perfected individualism, whereas it really lies in another direction: 
in a technical economic and capitalistic association of all its energies and 
cycles of production. . . . Strength and progress lie in the great co- 
ordinated unities: science has the victor>n 

Life is becoming harder, not softer, or easier for everyone/ said 
IMussoHni. Hard for men and hard for their work. But we may add 
that it is also becoming more elaborate, more ingenious. . . . Thus the 
close competition of world commerce Is also becoming an Intensive 
elaboration of industry and production. Woe to those countries that 
do not grasp this inexorable law of productive evolution. The technique 
of military war is developing toward new arms and new scientific 
elaborations. . . . For the principle of extensiveness is being substituted 
that of intensity. Aerial and vertical arms are being added to the 
horizontal lines of battle, and are displacing the latter. No less revolu- 
tionary is the evolution of the technique of economic war, for the 
production of every country is turning not merely to satisfying needs 
but to beating competition and conquering new markets. Hence Italy 
must face this problem, which I would call the struggle for saving the 
centime. To solve this problem of the infinitesimal we need a vast 
transformation of mentality, uses, means and functions.” (Virginio 
Gayda: La Lotta per il Centesimo, In Gerarchia^ July 1926, pp- 
45I-4S9-) 

No. 12. The New Empire 

(The following selections are taken from articles written by Mario 
Carli, one of the editors of Ulmpero, the leading paper of the intransigent 
faction. Carli was one of the most prominent futurists and is noted for 
his verbal violence and exuberance.) 

When Italy came into the hands of the fascist government, not 
only the political conditions of our country were changed, but the 
whole mechanism of politics took on a radically different aspect. The 
new man who is at the head of the government has stamped his style 
and his rhythm, his style of energy and the rhythm of velocity, on every 
expression of political life. The very atmosphere in which men move 
and in which political phenomena take shape is flooded by a new color, 
by a sense of nobility and of force which it had not before. Let us ad- 
mit it: until today a militant politics was impossible. The best men 
remained outside this vast field of aaion; the true geniuses entered 
it with repugnance only to leave it immediately with disgust. The 
reason for this incompatibility that for so many years excluded men 
like Carducci and Alfredo Oriani from public life and that still keeps 



282 THE NEW E^MPIRE 

out d'Animnzio, Jvlarinetti, Vilfredo Pareto, almost all men of stnfe 
besides being powerful geniuses, Is only this: the impossibility of using 
an exceptionally endowed brain in this field. 

Evidently in the democratic regime political genius w’as useless. The 
levelling tendency of democracy, the state of hidden slavery in which 
Italy found itself, the debility by which state action was oppressed, 
which in turn forcibly debilitated the action of the national parties while 
the subversive parties buoyant and apparently creative were coming into 
the foreground, the extinguisher-silencer which was clamped on to every 
cry, every act of wdl! and every forward-looking effort, all this dis- 
couraged even the slightest desire on the part of the higher and more 
far-sighted minds to devote themselves completely to politics. 

Politics therefore remained the crucible of mediocrity, the stage of 
buffoons, the arena in which fools and rogues displayed themselves, the 
■ship w^hose rudder was held by the hands of the flabby and the vile. 
And since a ruinous and automatic selection took place, which definitely 
rejected the few courageous men who had dared to face this base 
kind of life, a governing class inevitably resulted composed of men with- 
out backbone, courage, or genius. 

One who looks to the bottom of this phenomenon will tend to judge 
more leniently those men of the liberal state who preceded and in- 
voluntarily favored the present state of things. They were but the 
products of a ruinous selection; they were the necessary refuse of a 
nation that, not yet in entire possession of its own forces and of its 
own independence, could not press into the government any but trem- 
bling and powerless men. . . . 

Today a return is possible for those ^ magnanimous spirits that had 
disappeared from the sky of the country/ and even a poet can practice 
politics, and even a ^ visionary ^ has his role in the concerted action of 
operating forces. When we hear a head of the government, who for 
the first time is w'orthy of the name, speaking with so much virility 
and so much nobility, of his country, with so much pride in the present 
and with such faith in the future, we feel that finally we can approach 
this field without mortification and without shuddering; not, to be sure, in 
order to carry out all that our imagination and our burning impatience 
ivould like to, but without doubt infinitely more than would have been 
permitted us heretofore. 

We are moving in a different historic clime, no longer dominated by 
fear and doubt, no longer contaminated by baseness, fraud and com- 
promise. Tcxlay. with all the evils and deficiencies that still afflict us 
{fie! we are hardly born to our true political life!), we are a people of 
strong and conscious men, a people burning and active, moulding its own 
future with virile hands and sound heart. 

We feel an infinite emotion when the Head of the Government^ who 
once used to be regularly employed to stifle the generous voices that 
were raised in the interests of the future, speaks in a dominating manner 



THE NEW EMPIRE 283 

and with a high resounding voice of an ^ immortal Italian people that 
always finds a springtime for its hopes, its passion and its greatness/ 

We feel a magic impulse course through our veins when this Head, 
this thirty-nine year old President of the Council of Ministers, sprung 
from the vigorous soil of Romagna, distilled from the soundest and 
boldest soul of our adventurous people, asserts that we are too ^ squeezed 
into this narrow and adorable peninsula ’ and that ^ the problem of 
Italian emigration in the wwld is a problem of life and death for the 
Italian race/ 

We cry with joy intoxicated and exuberant w’hen this Man sings 
us the hymn of Italian youth, ^ keen, fearless, restless, but mighty/ 
whose ^ powerful ferment agitating its life ’ he feels. 

At last! It has been centuries since a similar language was heard and 
we needed it badly. Glory to him who first was able to talk this lan- 
guage after so much debasement! Fate, that gave Italy a man like 
Benito Mussolini, demands this prodigy also: that the elect spirits and 
outstanding geniuses, encouraged by the new situation, gather round 
him to cooperate in building up the prosperity and greatness of our 
country. 

The Triumphant Beast has been overthrown forever, and politics, no 
longer an arena of the mediocre and the knaves, is being re&tablished 
by the return of the strong, the impassioned and the faithful. . . . 

It is time to eradicate from the minds of the many the idea that 
imperialism is a prerogative of the few, an aristocratic conception that 
cannot and should not interest the laboring people, . . . This labor- 
ing people must be freed from this last illusion. Imperialism is not a 
dream, more or less mad, of a handful of seers; it is a hard and fatal 
necessity for all growing races, a duty imposed by history on ourselves, 
on our own generation and on those to come. Much more than the rich 
classes, much more than the intellectuals, the low and obscure masses 
have an interest in imperialism since they aspire to wealth, and will 
never, never, never have it unless they become able to grasp the neces- 
sity of expansion beyond their paternal boundaries, wheresoever and 
howsoever, by means of peace or of war, but with the spirit of a dominat- 
ing not a slavish people; for only thus can wealth be acquired, that 
wealth which we do not have and which we need at all costs. . . , 

Now given a nation like Italy in which there is a greater wealth of 
impatient energies, of imagination, of the ability to desire and to pos- 
sess, than elsewhere, and no gold, no iron, no coal, no oil, one cannot 
understand how there can be so much incomprehension and indifference 
toward the imperialistic problem — or expansionistic, if the word is 
off'ensive — which is primarily a problem of economic and only second- 
arily of political conquest. Why do our peasants feel forced to cross 
the oceans in search of work and comfort? Because there are too many 
of us in Italy, because our land has no mines, because our feet get in 
our way, and we cannot breathe for the crowd that stifles the peninsula, 



284 EMPIRE 

because in the primitive mind of the people there is the unnoticed but 

dear iastinct, that the strength and breath of Itdy mnst^be carried over 
the seas, must be imposed on people of inferior civilization, inferior 
genius, inferior birth-rate, and inferior capacity to work; and these 
are not merely the negroes* 

I repeat we must popularize imperialism. This we propose to do, and 
this wc are doing every day until “we shall have succeeded in giving 
Italians of every class and culture an imperial consciousness, freeing 
the field of the turgid rhetoric w’hich has been ^abused hitherto and 
erecting a series of practical postulates that will inject this formidable 
problem of life into the consciousness of the masses. ... ^ 

It is impossible today to cultivate a Napoleonic conception m Europe; 
coiic|ue3t by force of arms ov'er nations on our continent in 29^3 
absurd dream which no power, be it France, England or Italy, may 
attempt with impunity- . - - Hence we must conceive European politics 
as a rivalry of diplomatic influences and nothing more; Italy can teach 
them al! in this sense, and whoever is preoccupied with peace would do 
wtII to listen to its advice and imitate its actions. 

However these diplomatic influences may have more or less reason for 
existing; they may be more or less justified. The preponderant domina- 
tion of one nation over others cannot be tolerated if it is not based on 
an authentic moral, spiritual and physical superiority of the race. 

We can never allow states like Jugoslavia and Russia even though more 
powerful and ordered than they are now, to impose themselves on other 
states, whatever be their military and political power. But often the 
absurd state of affairs Is seen w’here a less civilized nation enjoys greater 
credit and arouses more sympathy among the leading nations of civili- 
zation, only because it is better armed and more warlike. 

Today genuine superiority, that is so-called hegemony, can be ac- 
quired by a complex of qualities and means which we shall not discuss 
here. The ‘‘primacy^’ in order to be maintained in practice, must be 
total ; only that people can wield the sceptre (and I do not mean over 
adjoining territory), w'bich displays a greater amount of physical and 
moral energ}’ and prevails over others in every department of life. Now 
Italy, even though it has not yet the wealth that constitutes other na- 
tions’ single pretext for predominance, is nevertheless so endowed with 
every other gift, physiological health, prolificacy, genius, sobriety, 
capacity for work, courage, energy and adventurous spirit, that in a not 
distant tomorrow* it may well aspire to this Primacy. ... 

Very well then; if it is incontestable that our people finds itself In this 
period of total resurrection and gradual rise in the world, then its 
Primacy, which is being integrated day by day, will automatically lead 
it to Empire. But let us be understood: an extra-European Empire 
over peoples not yet capable of self-government, over lands whose 
mineral products can give a nation like ours not only wealth but, by their 
raw materials which *we lack, commercial independence. 



THE NEW EMPIRE 


285 


The Latin Primacy in the hands of Italy implies a pacific, ra- 
diant, civilized, Mediterranean Empire. Not the hypocritic pretences 
of Albion, nor the brutal cynicism of the German blonds, nor the 
trembling despotism of a dissolving France; but the balanced wisdom 
inherited from the Romans, the sense of human justice which the 
Catholic Church has instilled in us during twenty centuries of her 
civilization, the good sense that does not lack the irony given by true 
intelligence and by the consciousness of one’s own strength. 

This will be our Empire and the world need but hasten its coming 
if it really aspires to peace. . . . 

We, fascist Italy, feel that our loins are directly descended from 
Roman fierceness, nor are wm displeased that a little barbarian influx 
has added to us that migratory impulse that may be considered as the 
patient period of •waiting for the inevitable expansionist movement of 
peoples destined for Empire. The warlike spirit is the fundamental 
character of Italians; it is not a fascist invention nor a post-bellum at- 
titude. Find me a single moment of histoiy^ in W'hich vre have not fought 
— for whom and for w^hat little matters, . . . 

A century of democratic dysentery was needed to submerge the in- 
dividual valor of Italians in the equalitarian and humanitarian soup. 
But today it is re-arising. The Great War put us on our feet and fascism 
has revealed us. Italians, mindful of themselves, want to return and be 
the indomitable warriors that they w^ere, and outdo themselves. Our 
stupendous youth is weary of theories and philosophies; it loves and 
wants war. The cultural corrosive is a terrible snare for the energies of 
a healthy organism; it hampers, deforms, bends and scatters these 
energies, poisons them with doubt, and embitters them with irony. A 
people of warm vitality and sound muscles like ours must energetically 
reject all doctrines that do not lead it immediately to a satisfaction 
of its thirst for power. This explains fascism. The rediscovery of 
the warlike spirit of a race that has alw^ays been at war with the 
universe. . . . 

Mussolini, Minister of War! This is what seems to me the supreme 
and most splendid incarnation of the Mussolinian spirit. His work, 
though it has been magnificently many-sided, lacked this essential side: 
it lacked the leadership of the military organization. And now comes 
this too. Who can any longer doubt that Mussolini is the most complete 
man of our times, the magic guide of the nation’s fortunes, whom G'Od 
has generously conceded to Italy? 

Fascism will never be able to fulfil Its tremendous task on a strictly 
political plane. Fascism issued from the War and in war it must find 
its outlet. Our country can conclude nothing except by a great war 
which we will neither provoke nor seek, but which we shall confront 
with the serene courage -of peoples predestined to dominate the world. 
If the last war was one of liberation, the next one will place us in power. 
. . . And we will not find oumelves faring an atrocious war like that in 



286 THE NEW EMPIRE 

wliicii we paid for all the anti-militarism of the preceding twenty years, 
together with the widest liberty and indulgence for those who carried 
oiT sabotage, defeatism, treason, and spying for the enemy. 

If an iron government had been given Italy during and previous to the 
War, how many disasters and how many ruins, how many misfortunes 
w’e w^ould have escaped ! 

But let the past warn us for the future and make us^more severe and 
warlike, give us the consciousness of what tvar really is, make us more 
conscious of our valor, and of our enormous possibilities. We who for 
iifteen years have invoked the advent of more virile generations, more 
dynamic, more bellicose, are happy to state that there are indubitable 
symptoms of this advent. The Italian people, in its overwhelming 
masses, is no longer a soft moonlight serenader, but, without forgetting 
Its prodigious artistic imagination, It is a people of soldiers ready for 
every risk and every sacrifice. It is a people of religious, rhapsodic 
ivarriors who will conquer the future with the mystic fire of their own 
faith, interwoven with songs and with flourishes and thrusts of the 
sword. Thus we look down almost with a feeling of sorrowful pity on 
the ideas and sentiments that inspired the wars of liberation, though holy 
and worthy of benediction in so far as they unified us and gave us our 
strong natural boundaries. The war of the future will be . , * a 
futuristic "war. It will be a conscious, proud, optimistic, voluntary effort, 
anxious for dominating expansion, breaking forth, strong in its 
higher and divine right, not to burst chains, but to win breathing space. 
It will be less sentimental, democratic, and humanitarian, and more 
^ sacred egoism more a spirit of greatness and a physiological instinct 
than a romantic conspiracy. We will not march against oppressors, but 
towards a life that awaits us in its fulness and of which we are becoming 
daily more wwthy by our ardor, our genius, our numbers, and^'our 
energy. . . . 

We may hope that many equivocations towards us will be cleared 
up, and that Italy will be regarded as a powerful nation, vigorous, wilful, 
intent on its tomorrow, re-awakened to a destiny of power and hence 
of dominion, by w^hich all the old humanitarian and equalitarian 
doctrines . . . have been dispersed like unwholesome fogs in the 
fascist sun. 

We are not weak and hence we do not know how to wail and cry for 
help. But America must . . . not exploit this fact to close the access 
to its lands for our emigrants, who . . . overflow the soil of our 
country. And America must also unburden itself a little of its indigestion 
of gold which like good King Midas isolates it from the sympathies of 
the world. 

Real friendship is possible only on the basis of absolute parity. Now 
you have health and we have it; you have muscles and we have them, 
you have freed yourselves from the disintegrating doctrines of Wilson 
and we have banished forever all defeatist theory. But there are other 



THE XEW EMPIRE 


287 

things in which we differ. We must seek to suppress these differences as 
far as possible. We are sure that if there are a hundred intelligent and 
sincere men in America, . . . Italian-American cooperation will no 
longer be a dream. America has every interest in encouraging in every 
manner the development of a nation like Italy, for the sake of the 
equilibrium of races and of civilized nations. 

And we who for fifteen years have championed the doctrine and the 
practice of energy, of the fist, of the racing pace, of the death leap, now 
that fascism has largely realized all this, now that the Italian youth is 
dedicated to physical exercises as is the American youth (the athletes of 
Italy, Mussolini said yesterday, are innumerable legions), we are con- 
vinced that we will easily understand each other. 

For our imperialism, which is an imperialism of rich blood, of heavy 
muscles, and strong stomachs, can be understood by no one better than 
the American people that has founded an Empire between two oceans, 
by miracles of courage and energy. . . . (Mario Carli; Faschmo In- 
transigente, pp. 15-22, 28-31, 68-69, 89-91, 215-217.) 



PART III 

Fascist Revolution and Government 
Xo. 13. From the ^femo{rs of a Sqtiadrist 

(Umberto F. Banchelli was one of Dumini’s closest associates In 
one of the most famous and notorious of all the squads. In 1922 he was 
expelled from the Party for conduct unbecoming a fascist.” This 
circumstance should be borne in mind by the reader in connection 
with Banchelli's judgments on party politicians. He was sentenced for 
beinn implicated in a petty swindle, nyung to export straw hats to South 
America. ) 

Beginnhi^rj of Florentine Fascism., 

“ In the first months of 1919 Fascism began in Italy; in Florence, 
the Alliance of Civic Defense (Alleanza di Difesa Cittadma) , It arose 
through the will of several scoundrels aided in its arduous military tasks 
by several ex-combatants who acted in good faith. In the first class was 
the lawyer, Terzaghi, later deputy of Parma, w^hose boast, neverthe- 
less, it can always be to have first publicly raised the standard of revolt 
against the outrageous conduct of the reds. In the second class were the 
lawyer, Carlo Marini, Umberto Banchelli, centurions, , . . and Amerigo 
Dumini, . . . etc., the tiny remaining percentage of the bourgeoisie and 
aristocracy which was still alive and red-blooded. Terzaghi and 
the Directorate made a large collection of money, about a million lire. 
They filled the city with wall posters and handbills and the rooms 
of the Bastogi palace were not large enough to hold all who joined, 
amounting to 25,000. both men and women. The odor of powder 
pervaded the city. The reds were seized with such trembling that on 
the eighteenth day of the month of August, the day set for the Revolu- 
tion, everything passed off quietly. 

It may not be amiss to glance at the manner in which some of the 
members of the Civic Alliance contributed to its merits. For example, 
they had printed 10,000 wall posters and 50,cxx) handbills, which they 
put into the hands of a crippled veteran and well-known crook. He 
gathered a number of associates, and took a number of carriages for a 
pleasant ride, during which 1,000 of the posters were pasted up. 
Then they sold the rest of them for paper by the pound. There were 
also the picked squads, with their innumerable bills for carriage, meals 
and travelling expenses. There were those who stole the keys to the 
armory from -me while I was asleep, and appropriated ten or twelve of 
the finest pistols. But, thanks to the five hundred lire I gave to an ex- 



MEMOIRS OF A SQUADRIST 289 

pertj they were recovered. Of the higher degrees of dictatorial power 
I know nothing, for they were not in my field. I do know, however, 
that of the million lire there remained not one penny. Later a co- 
operative was established, but a very fat mouse made enormous holes in 
the cheese — and the treasury^ Soon, however, the political elections 
approached and then the Civic iUliance was transformed into a mosaic 
of candidates. The military group and their leaders immediately 
retired, and ex-captain Francesco Giunta, now fascist deputy of Trieste, 
was made their commander-in-chief. The Alliance for Civic Defense 
made of itself a little theatre of comedies and smirches, featuring both 
men and women, who entertained themselves with all sorts of graceful 
indoor gymnastics. There w'as a lot of small talk, but after the 
departure of the stage-manager, Terzaghi, the comedy lost the last 
trace of intellectual vigor. The Alliance for Civic Defense, transformed 
into a political body, lost in the public eye the reputation for forceful 
action which the needs of the moment had at first conferred upon 
it. . . . 

Umberto Pasella, the Political Secretary General,^ with the aid of 
several volunteers, tried to establish fasci in Florence and the rest of 
Tuscany. But the wind being very^ unpropitious in those times, he did 
not dare insist nor come out into the open. As soon as Amerigo Dumini 
and the writer returned from Albania (where we had gone to avenge 
the assassination of Lieutenant Dumini by the Albanians), Florentine 
fascism began to take root. Amerigo Dumini, a genuine soldier, wounded 
in the War, and decorated with three medals for bravery in the face of 
the enemy, may regard himself as the real founder of Tuscan 
fascism. . , . 

After a series of street fights and general beatings in Florence, came 
the first expedition, that of Montespertoli, which sounded the trumpet 
of resurrection for all the discouraged and dormant patriots. The mem- 
bers of this small and dangerous expedition (among whom was Dumini) 
were all in danger of being massacred by the red drunken mob, but by 
their courage they succeeded in winning the fray and only one of them, 
Cuesta, was lightly wounded. Two months later Montespertoli was 
friendly to fascism. 

It is well to understand how beautiful the idea was for which these 
men, after three years of dangers in the war, did not hesitate to risk 
their lives to rescue a friend or to assert an ideal.’^ 

Enter y the Sons of Grey-beards. 

The election of Zamboni ® . . . proved to be the glowing crucible 
from which emerged berth the most beautiful and the most abstruse 

^ He was sent by the Milan fasmo to organise and disapllne Tuscany. 

* The fmdstt in October 1920 were already alwiit 600 strong, and elected m their 
new director an ex-captain, Zamboni, 



290 


MEMOIRS OF A SQUADRIST 

forms of Tuscan fascism. It must be remembered that in the case 
of the Ailiance for Civic Defense, the party of grey-beards, those who 
for fifty years have governed ItaiV, had made ample representation 
for itself in the jasci by their clients, by _their sons. But though they 
had entered ffii muss^ into the first organization, they stayed out of the 
second, for the report ot firearms rvas something which disagreed both 
with their positive principles and wdth their practice. • • • ^ Florentine 
fascism was duped from the beginning by the sons and clients of the 
grey-beards, who though they attended the meetings in great numbers 
never w’Ciit on dangerous expeditions. W‘e had thus^tw^o different 
policies among us: the politics of assemblies^ and the politics of expedi- 
tions. The true ex-combatants followed the example of Dumini and 
with tlieir squads dealt out strong blows, not occupying themselves over- 
much with the petty politics of meetings, being tired of small talk.^ 

It is necessar}’ to remember that the grey-beards and their clients 
had entered the ^dscio with their particular aims. One of them^ was to 
exercise class justice, that is, to inflict punishment, not as jascisti, but 
as sons of lawyers, or of doctors or of dry-goods merchants, etc. And 
so for a long time wrhenever a troop of these agents of justice met some- 
body dressed as a laborer, they laid about them in holy ardor. They had 
a conception no better than that of the communists who had beaten and 
assassinated anybcxiy well-chd. 

As soon as a few of these grey-beards and their clients and sons 
found themselves face to face with force they acted like their big 
brothers at the front: they withdrew shouting: ^ Viva Italia! Viva 
Fiume!' In such circumstances the combatants offered real resistance, 
but somebody tried to harangue the mob, and then all was useless. 
Discouragement took the upper hand.” 

Punitive Expeditions. 

There was the expedition of S. Piero a Sieve, in which Chiostri, 
Capanni (now Honorable Capanni), and Zamboni himself and Frulllni 
participated — an expedition badly conceived and badly executed. The 
fascisti fell into an ambush of peasants, white bolsheviks. Bruno 
Frullini, giving the account of the expedition, tells how Zamboni and 
the other two fired like devils at a closed window and did not stop until 
it was completely shattered. From this it can be inferred that it was 
untrue that the fascisti killed that peasant who was found dead behind a 
doorway. . . . 

In Tuscany our expeditions had spread terror in the camp of the 
subversives. The Florentine fascia had gone as far north as Carrara 
and as far south as Chiusi. Our squads were still invincible even for 
the greatest vigilance of the reds. 

* The " grty-teard elemeEt formed the Umom FoMca Namomde and set up a 
bloc of caH'didtattt for election. 



MEMOIRS OF A SQUADRIST 291 

The Hall of so-called Labor and the Fiom had been entered, their 
papers burned, and their banners taken. Red flags were displayed by 
the hundreds in the museum of the fascia. Communism among the 
railroad workers received a mortal blow when Lavaguini, its leader and 
perhaps the only one of all the red leaders who was bonafide, was 
killed by an unknown person. The places in town where railroad com- 
munists were well known to be in the habit of meeting, were deserted en 
masse by these fathers of the revolution. For a long time there was no 
more talk of strikes. . . . 

The countryside was searched daily: Empoli, Santa Croce sulF 
Arno, Fucecchio, San Miniato; then Perugia and the valley of Chiana. 
In that place there had been a communists^ ambush, where several 
Aretine and two Florentine fascists were killed . . . barbarously as- 
sassinated but afterwards very fully avenged. It was a triumph of 
energy, though lacking the necessary discipline.’’ 

The Economic Question. 

“The more intelligent began to realize that the economic question 
was becoming more serious every day, and that the hour had come for 
launching labor syndicates. Fascism at that time was almost entirely 
unprovided with men competent in the field of economics; those whom 
they had, came from socialism and w'ere caught in the general uncer- 
tainty. A few were not listened to. Others did not make themselves 
heard, because though being in evidence in fascist circles, they could 
not make up their minds to come out in the open and declare decisively 
what they thought. The cry went up that the worker must be be- 
friended. Now at last they discovered how unfortunate had been the 
work of the young goody-goodies (figli di papa) who had erected an 
insurmountable wall over against the working classes- Perrone outdid 
himself in his efforts to succeed, but either because he lacked the neces- 
sary qualities or the suitable means, he could do little. 

Now came a moment which was undoubtedly one of the most critical 
for our fascia. Caught between the duty of being the friend of the 
people, as had been said and re-said thousands of times, and the 
lamentable tears of the merchants, business men, and industrialists, 
from whom they had received money, our fascio preferred to do the 
noble thing and defend the people. However, the Directorate was not 
unanimous. The entire responsibility and direction of the hard work 
was entrusted to Banchelli in his capacity of Commissioner of Vigilance; 
the official role was entrusted to Pirelli. . . . 

The desire of the Central Committee of F as ci was to defend the con- 
sumer and I observed this scrupulously. The campaign found me 
perfectly prepared. Scarcely had I been nominated Commissioner of 
Vigilance in the interests of civic police, when I had creatai a corps of 
^ Federmiom M Oferm MettMurgid. 



292 ME^IOIRS OF A SQUADRIST 

70 inspectors with about 1,200 iBen under them. To their previous 
duties was added that of reducing prices by the measures established. 
In a room in the fascw^s office, I put a special tribunal and from it 
proceeded orders, inspectors, squads, punishtnents and praises. In 
order to avoid misunderstandings, before beginning the agitation and the 
cudgellings, I went out one day with a centuria of men, who prried large 
cards on which was wTitten, ^ You have two days within which to 
reduce prices.’ We marched through the whole city amid the acclama- 
tions of citizens of all classes. In San Frediano (the poor district) the 
people wanted to cariy^ us on their shoulders in triumph. Both out of 
political tact and in order to get closer to the mass of workers, we kept 
to the streets in which the people were thickest. Two days later, as 
predicted, the cudgellings began and prices were reduced in the just 
proportions, from fifteen to tiventy-five per cent, established by the 
Imcio. The cudgellings were innumerable, equal to the innumerable 
petty thefts on the part of the merchants. Whole squads, trembling 
from the blows received, were brought by the inspectors into the room 
of the tribunal to receive a little lecture of admonition, without partiality 
from all classes alike, from the currier to the wine merchant, from the 
clothing merchant to the broker. . . . ^ 

The egregious merchants of the town, instead of hating me, should 
have thanked me, for with the prices reduced they began to sell the 
merchandise which had been unsold on their shelves for three 
months. - . . 

In those days the fas do became a sore spot for the profiteers. Among 
those beaten up and afterwards brought to the court by me, there were 
very many business men of the communist faith who were selling at 
higher prices than their democratic colleagues. Then for the first time 
I had a glimpse of the number of rascals and speculators who live like 
parasites on the shoulders of the consumer. I had a chance to see how 
the necessities of life pass through the hands of numerous grabbers 
and robbers before they arrive at one^s table. I was assailed continually 
by brokers, merchants and business men, all of them asking for guards 
for their stores, having naturally acceded to the rules of the provisory 
committee. I had six secretaries to take care of the correspondence, 
but they were not enough. 

Several merchants were found repeatedly violating the agreements 
made, and accordingly by order of the fascia, their stores were closed 
for two or three days, and on the doors were posted cards reading, 
^ Closed for continued robbery.’ I had to occupy myself personaEy 
with the central market, and especially the market of vegetables at 
Sant’Ambrogio. At four in the morning, I took twenty young fascisti, 
one of whom carried a tri-color flag, and we mingled with the peasants 
and among the retailers to control the prices for the day. I found a 
valuable aid in Signor FusI, city counsellor assigned as director to that 
market. He explained to me the whole mechanism of the vegetable 



MEMOIRS OF A SQUADRIST 293 

market, which through the Imbecility of the various authorities had be- 
come more and more complicated, and always at the expense of the con- 
sumer in the town. 

The traditional democratic-bourgeois mentality was the cause of all 
the evil. And the tri-color among the vegetables, carried by men of 
honor and accompanied by young men of confidence, had a more quiet- 
ing effect than any club. The peasants were found to be disposed to lower 
their prices. Their president, a keen peasant, told me that he was happy 
over what the fascio was doing, that he was very well satisfied indeed 
over the concession which had been made to the peasants by^the Pasz- 
rowsky brewery. It had reduced by thirty per cent the price of the 
malt residue which the peasants use extensively. The general secre- 
tary of the brewer}^ Signor Polli, was extraordinarily accommodating 
in arriving at this agreement. 

Pirelli, on the other hand, in conjunction with the authorities of the 
prefecture and municipality and the representativ'es of merchants and 
business men, nominated various commissions, a large number of them, 
and tied himself up in interminable councils in which agreement was 
always reached with difficulty. 

What purpose was served by these commissions of the prefecture ^and 
commune we soon discovered. The creaking old bureaucracy was given 
a new lease on life, and hardly had the work of the squads and their 
inspectors ceased, when these commissions permitted prices to return 
to their former level I am certain that if the Directorate had cooper- 
ated with me in the practical offensive, we would have left more perma- 
nent traces. As it was, action was diminished and there were finally two 
commissaries of the Directorate, one of finances and one of syndicates, 
who set themselves to work transporting poultry in trucks from Sesto to 
the central market, and this without my knowledge. Another sent a 
truck to take some wine casks. Pirelli himself, with the advice and aid 
of an inspector, had a whole avalanche of shoes arrive which he gave 
to a dealer on Borgo San Lorenzo to be retailed. Of this also I was not 
informed at the time. Producers of wine, oil, milk, dry goods, made 
attractive offers to the fascio^ I wanted to make sales direct to the 
consumer, but was given no support in this matter. However, I should 
say that even had I succeeded in this Intention, the benefits would have 
been of short duration, since I had at my disposal volunteer elements 
who were little suited to the task. I began to see weariness around me, 
even as I myself was becoming weary. We were not the kind of people 
who can by profession keep peace and exercise control At last the 
cudgellers were getting tired! 

Our fight touched intimately not only the economic system of the 
city, but also of the nation as well* We butted up against a wall cen- 
turies old, which, though indeed it bent a little, ’did not break, for it was 
sustained by too many interests genuinely and ardfidally created, hidden 
and open. I realized this after three days of the struggle, and told my 



294 


MEMOIRS OF A SQUADRIST 

colleagues of the Directorate that I could keep up the agitation for per- 
haps only three weeks more. And so in order not to lose the sympathy 
w-hich we had gained among the people, I beat a slow retreat. But 
the interference which came from those famous commissions in the serv- 
ice of legality, increased the confusion. I have the impression that our 
work was more than a iittle profitable to someone, but I do not know 
to whom, certainly to the immediate political and economic interests, 
perhaps of a group of financiers of grey-beards.*' 

Politics. 

“ After the political elections a number of types joined the fascist move- 
ment — bankrupts, malcontents, communist spies, office seekers. Mus- 
solini announced the unfortunate phrase about the ^ republican tendency,’ 
which, though not bad as an honest idea, did damage here and there in 
the ranks of the fascisti, which w'ere a mosaic of political principles. It 
was premature by at least six months. The fascist deputies, each still 
standing alone out of surprise at the unexpected and bewildering honor 
which had come to him in being seated at Montecitorio, were the first 
to rebel against the Duce. All forgot that they ow^ed what they were 
to him alone, and that but for him they w^ould not have been lifted out 
of the political obscurity in which they would have lived forever. Some 
wrote to the newspapers that they were democrats, others liberal mon- 
archists. There was a shameful competition among inferiors who W’ere 
unwilling to admit that Mussolini had created for them an unpolluted 
fresh start in politics which they did not know how to use profitably.” 

The Sarzana Expedition. 

The Caporetto of Fascism^ 

About five hundred Tuscan fascisti, among them several fine ex- 
combatant figures, set out for Sarzana. Some of them were commanders 
of squads, but they w'ere easily overruled by the undisciplined mob when 
the tragedy broke upon them. 

The rendezvous was held in the country near the Ax^enza, and the march 
was started about tw^o o’clock of the night of July zist, under the light 
of a magnificent moon. In the minds of the fascisti there seemed to be 
something both mystic and grand about this column marching across the 
countryside! But an evil prophet thought it looked like a funeral 
march- This unfortunately proved to be true. As for tactics, we de- 
parted unorganized and unprepared for an emergency. The plan of 
action could not be read nor explained to the captains of squads, who 
moreover worried little about it, since in the matter of tactics almost 
all expected to use their own. 

The idea was simple: to march upon Sarzana openly with one half 
of the force and in an orderly manner make the authorities surren- 
der the nine prisoners; with the other half, if provoked, to ferret out 



MEMOIRS OF A SQUADRIST 295 

thoroughly the squads of communists that were stationed in the environs 
of the city. ... 

Dumini, the leader, and his general staff had no choice but to march 
at the head of the enormous column marching single file, and to be 
the first to confront the communist ambush which reliable information 
gave us to understand was a certainty. The guides marched behind 
us. The march of sixteen kilometres carried us through the shadows and 
between farms and then along the railroad track. As a train was passing 
on its way to Sarzana undisciplined spirit made headway, and several 
shots w’ere fired to halt the train. The leaders suppressed this impulsive 
conduct, but it was too late, for the railroad men spread the alarm at 
Sarzana. 

The expedition was isolated from any friendly contacts. The few 
shots fired announced our march in advance, the aim of which could 
easily be imagined, and they proved a large factor in the staging of 
that tragedy. 

At the inside gate of the Sarzana Station, two policemen begged the 
fascisti not to pass beyond them if they w^anted to avoid being punished, 
and then as a compromise, w’e w^ere told to pass by the side entrances, 
but the noisy mob broke out in undisciplined spirit, and insisted on 
doing the contrary. And so having passed on, about 200 of the jascisti 
reached a place where a police captain was stationed, one of Bonomi’s 
hired assassins, together with eight policemen wdth their rifles in hand. 
They began a parley with Dumini and Santini, the captain of the Pisa 
squad- The parley was naturally interrupted by more than one of the 
fascisti present w’ho also wanted to take part in it, until finally two 
pistol shots coming from the direction of the policemen immediately 
provoked a volley from the policemen^s guns. It is wmrth noting that 
there were then two pistol shots, and also that the police captain sud- 
denly raised his arm, with a stick in his hand, — a gesture which is 
commonly that of the commander of an executioner’s squad. From the 
captain’s manner of talking and his sarcastic smile at first quite In- 
definable, It was evident that he realized that we had witnessed some- 
thing serious. 

In fact the tragedy broke upon us unforeseen and like lightning. Our 
men had previously had strict orders that whatever happened at Sarzana 
no one was ever to fire at soldiers or at policemen or at Royal Guards, 
if there were any; so that veiy^' few of the fascisti answered the fire of the 
assassin policemen. What then took place was pitiful. Among the 
shots, the groans, the falling of the dead and wounded, there arose a 
general cry of indignation from many of those present. . , . The lack 
of moral and tactical unity provoked most of them to flight. In 
others it provoked bewilderment though they remained at their post 
under fire. A few retaliated. Among the many who fled into the coun- 
tryside about thirty were wounded or killed in a truly barbaric 
fashion. 



296 MEMOIRS OF A SQUADRIST 

One need not go to Lybia to seek ferocity; the peasants of Sarzana 
gave such horrible evidence of their bloodthirsty rage that no revenge 
in the world could suffice to punish them adequately. 

A platoon of Royal Guards endeavored hard to fire at our flank, but 
their Captain remembered in time that he was an Italian and at the risk 
of his own life made his soldiers, many of whom were Reds, lower their 
arms. Those jascisti who did not flee across the fields took refuge inside 
the station; others remained to help the wounded and then to carry them 
to the hospital The disgraceful conduct of the Sarzanese continued to 
vent itself even against the wounded who had recovered in the hospital 
These poor friends of ours were treated not as men needing aid, but as 
beings unworthy of care or compassion. The siren of alarm against 
faseisti incursions had been sounded by persons in the hospital and of- 
fices of public charities, who were always among the first to take on them- 
selves the burden of defending Sarzanese pussism,^ The physicians 
either out of fear of their patients, or out of congenital meanness, re- 
ceived the wounded in the most careless manner. The women of Sar- 
zana were busy boiling oil and water to throw down on the fascisti. 
One comrade who was accompanying a wounded friend, was killed by 
the communists only a few steps from a squad of Royal Guards, with- 
out their taking the trouble to defend him or to arrest the assassins. 

Among the fascisti there were many who had come to pursue their 
class Interests. Several of these I found hidden under the beds and 
divans in the house of the Station-master. Several others had disap- 
peared. 

With the first train that passed in the direction of Carrara, a large 
crowd of them took their departure, leaving their friends in the dark 
and in the lurch, and all the energy of the head of the general staff was 
required to regulate the retreat Dumini succeeded in about an houris 
time in having the prisoners freed who had been locked up in the 
Sarzana jail The personal work of Dumini always measured up to the 
most extreme demands of the tragic situation. If he committed a mis- 
take it was in leading men who were morally and militarily inferior to 
the type needed. . . . 

Sarzana demonstrated that in active organizations the person who 
makes speeches to incite others to battles should himself take part in the 
battles, in order that he may know what he is talking about. The 
most odious and injurious diatribes W’ere heaped on the unfortunate 
leaders of the expedition. ^ Crooks ' brought confusion into the meet- 
logs, secured the expulsion of several of these leaders and assumed 
the places of command left vacant. The big electors and protectors of 
the Florentine fascio, eternally involved in fascist battles, made me 
of the fact of Sarzana to carry their inner eiectorlal organization to 
that level of baseness which finally ended in the autonomist movement 
of the Pasella faction. . . . 

® A fascist term for the Partko Ufficmle Si^chdktm, 



297 


MEMOIRS OF A SQUADRIST 

SarzanEj however, was a terrible warning for fascism. Military organ- 
ization took more definite shape, and with the tangible signs of a better 
understanding among fascisti^ discipline began to take on a ivholesome 
and strong form. 

After Sarzana many of DumlnFs and my personal enemies made our 
dead a pretest for proclaiming benefit celebrations and subscriptions for 
both dead and living. The demagogues who aspired to public offices did 
not hesitate in their conclaves to recall with rhetorical phrases the 
sacrifice of our friends.’’ 

Towards the End, 

‘^Towards the end of September 1921, the directors of the fascio 
published the bombastic and rhetorical manifesto announcing that the 
fascio would retire from the struggle since the bourgeoisie was no longer 
giving it aid. It explained that fascism was being persecuted by the 
authorities with the consent of the democracy, and hence, its dignity 
being offended it would retire. . . . Really it was the directors ® who 
were undergoing a crisis, for their personal ambitions had not been 
entirely satisfied! . . . 

It is certain that the fascio of Florence for its own reasons did not 
want to be subordinated to any superior control. The crisis had its 
origins far back In the very founding of the fascio, and all this because 
of the work of the moss-backed, slippered grey-beards. For from the 
beginning there were two policies and divergent aims : the market-place 
policy and the assembly policy, which together produced the book- 
keeping policy. This was the logical consequence, and perhaps the 
only one, of Mussolini’s giving fascism to Pasella to be wet-nursed. 

It appeared at that time that between the fascisti of the Partito 
Nazionale Fascista and several autonomists, there would have to be 
some duels, but because of the gravity of the situation the disputes were 
pacified. Pasella and his Directorate continued to promote numerous 
subscriptions for all sorts of things, ever new sources of money. The 
expenses were always very heavy ! — the rent of the new headquarters 
in Piazza Mentana is 18,000 lire annually. There were also, I believe, 
some lotteries and benefit entertainments, for the purpose of erecting 
marble memorial tablets. In a restaurant of the city, amid spaghetti and 
beefsteaks, they decorated with a gold medal one Mario Pelagatti, the 
friend from Spezia. 

Pasella tried feverishly to win the sympathies of the workers and of 
the professional classes, in order to enlarge the little syndicates creatai 
by him and employed all the malcontents to swell the numbers. 

According tO‘ my judgment, instead of demccratic duels, which never 
really settle any question, fascisti ought to wage duels dFlmetkam, or 
armed only with sticks. This latter is a better way also for the reason 

® RO'VcEo, Pekgmtti, Pirelli. 



298 FASCIST INDIVIDUALISM 

that the life of a fascist belongs entirely to fascism until the day of its 

complete triumph.^^ 

(At the very close elections of iQ 2 ij Aguoletti assembled the fascio in 
the Piazza, ready to storm the Palazzo Vecchio, in case the vote should 
be adverse. The vote favored them, consequently it was the communists 
who began rioting. — Ed.) '' And when the bomb exploded in Piazza 
Antinori and with it the civil war, Agnoletti immediately gave orders to 
a few men of action to strike a blow at the head instead of at the body 
of Leninism, and so it was done/’ 

The Peroration. 

Ah, miserable rogues! LegaliQ^! That painted slave of yours and 
docile pimp for your evil dreams! Do you think you can give her as a 
companion to an able-bodied legionary? We too shall stand by legality, 
but our own, which can never be yours. Give thanks to your gods, o you 
worshippers of the golden calf, which for the moment is helpless because 
the fruit is not quite ripe. But you will soon meet us again at the new 
battle ground. We shall see if your traditions, w'hich go back but to 
1848, will give you the courage to wage battle with the legionary, who 
has re-arisen stronger than ever! 

Fascism, the resurrection of our race, will assimilate those national 
forces that are still capable of cooperating with it and for it. Its path 
is marked out for it, splendid and sure, and speedier than we would 
have believed six months ago. No one any longer believes in the 
present institutions and in the representative men in power. The state 
is but a mint, and until now its money was believed to be real gold. 
Now the state with its democracies is counterfeit and is no longer 
trusted. Fascism will not limit itself to substituting new men in the 
public offices, but will clean out thoroughly all the organs of the state and 
of society. Over and above the incidents of battle, for a considerable 
period of years, there will remain in the arena on the one side fascism 
and our country, and on the other side there will be communism dressed 
up in various colors, but ever a foreign invasion. In time Catholicism 
will absorb into a single ideal both country and fascism, and then its 
single adversary will be the Jewish international capitalism with all its 
negative men and tendencies. Between Catholicism, which is Rome, 
and Hebraism, which is New York and London, the victory can not be 
doubted: RomeP (Umberto F. Banchelli: Le Memorie di %n Fascista, 
I9ig“i922. Florence 1922.) 

No. 14. Fascist Individualism 

(The following excerpts from the speeches of Alberto De StefanI indi- 
cate his position on some of the major issues within fascism. They were 
written in 1921-1922, when the position of the fascist deputies in the 
Chamber was being debated, when the national syndicates were incor- 



FASCIST INDIVIDUALISM 


299 

porated into the fascist ranks and when the general economic platform 
of fascism was being determined. De Stefani was a professor of politi- 
cal economy m a technical school near Venice. He took a prominent 
part in the activities of the fascisti in Venetia and especially at Trieste 
and Flume. He was one of the first fascist deputies to Parliament.) 

“ If we look closely into our history from its i^ery origins we shall find 
that fascism in its most fundamental signification has always existed 
and has always operated in the most serious crises of the nation. More- 
over there have always existed two opposed conceptions of history: 
the individualistic and heroic conception of our Latin race, and the 
socialistic gregarian conception which is Teutonic and characteristic of 
current socialism. So-called scientific socialism is a foreign product, a 
product exported by a German Jew. 

Solidly opposed to socialism stands the individualistic conception 
that we have inherited from liberalism, from our own forefathers of the 
nsoTgimentOj who had the assurance of their own convictions and who 
continued to sit on the benches of the glorious national right wing even 
when its fortunes had declined. The liberals of today have migrated in 
a body towards the center, for liberalism is being submerged in demo- 
cratic ideas. Fascism reestablished the tradition of the national right 
and when the Issue was being discussed where our parliamentary group 
ought to be seated, I claimed energetically that it ought to sit on the 
extreme right. 

The historical function of fascism is very clear today and does not 
lend itself to equivocation: fascism is an aristocratic and individualistic 
movement.” {Discorsi^ pp. 96-97.) 

“ Democracy is a concrete reality that we accept, that we recognize as 
an Insuperable condition of life today. But for us democracy is not an 
end, it is a means, a field in which we can work to the advantage of the 
nation. We were and are opposed to those interpretations of present 
democracy that tend to subject the nation to the will of the majority. 
Even a handful of men has the right and the duty to set its own ideal 
vision and its own line of action against an erring and ignorant majority. 
Look closely into history and you will become aware that history is not 
only and perhaps not mainly a democratic product but an aristocratic 
product. I heard very well how the Head of the Government told us in 
the Chamber how necessary it is that the authority of the state be re- 
established in Italy. Now I do not understand these abstract phrases: 
the authority of the state Is nothing but the authoritative force of men. 
It rests in and is entrusted to the concrete energy and power to rule 
which one man has over others. This power of ruling you feel when 
you look into the eyes of the man who commands you, it is transformed 
in you, by his look, his actions, and his words, into nec^sary obedience, 
into a spontaneous recognition of hh force, into a dedication of ymir 



300 FASCIST IXDIVIDUALIS:\I 

own forces to his, and in your being inflamed by his passion and his 
ideas. Thus gentlemen, the superiority of a man makes itself felt.” 
{Discorsi^ pp. 112-113.) 


•"^The predominant characteristic of the present crisis is to be found 
In the increasing disparity between population and the material means of 
production, due on the one hand to the natural increase of the people, 
and on the other to the slower rate of increase of capital, which latter is 
the consequence of war and of the destruction of wealth resulting from 
the preponderance of socialistic politics. The pressure of population is 
great and today constitutes one of our weaknesses but tomorrow may* 
constitute our strength. The greatest task for fascism's political econ- 
omy today is the reduction of this pressure. There are two ways: 
emigration and speeding up the process of the saving and the formation 
of capital. It is needless to speak of a Malthusian policy. 

Two means have been used for regaining an equilibrium betwreen 
population and capital: public works and the imposition of a definite 
quota of laborers on employers. Illusory tactics. The employment of 
laborers is determined and limited by the amount of instrumental capital 
available both mobile and immobile. At any moment this quantity is 
w^hatever it may be. Public works and the Imposition of a quota of 
laborers cannot increase it. Instead they cooperate in many cases to 
retard the accumulation of capital. . . . 

We must face the facts without taking recourse to deceptive means 
that almost always end in decreasing production. Let us open our 
eyes. Italy is a small country both as to its agricultural area and as 
to its taw materials, relatively to its populaticm. It must send its own 
human surplus beyond its boundaries. The peace treaties have not 
changed this tremendous fact. England and France have kept the 
German colonial empire for themselves; the Asiatic and African poli- 
cies of England and France are anti-Italian. In supplying ourselves 
with raw materials we must first of all undergo the economic 
and political monopolies of producing countries. The protectionist 
immigration policies of those states to which our emigration is directed 
is becoming more accentuated and is receiving the support also 
of the workers in those states. Hence in the face of our population 
pressure there exists the pressure of the bonds by which our country 
is encased and which prevent it from regaining an equilibrium between 
capital and population. Unless we accept the facts of hunger, we are 
compelled to resort either to pacific means, persuading the world 
of our necessities, or to violence on the supreme ground of self- 
preservation. 

The foreign policy of fascism is dominated by the internal population 
pressure. It is clear, precise, and oudined by the most definite projects’. 
There are states that must choc^e between coming to agreements and 



301 


FASCIST INDIVIDUALISM 

being forced into them. Ours is a small country that holds a large 
people. We have overcome socialistic pacifism. The necessities of emi- 
gration may, if they should not be recognized, give way to phenomena 
of an entirely different character.” (Discorsi, pp. 177--179.) 

“ Our fasci, having risen so rapidly and having such a burning faith 
that they are too impatient to solve their economic and technical prob- 
lems laboriously and systematically, have now and then adopted meth- 
ods that lead to a destruction of wealth and to retarding the growth 
of capital. Those who have assumed the direction of syndical organiza- 
tions have a tremendous responsibility on their shoulders, increased 
by the power of choice which the organizers have conferred on 
them. 

The Fascist Party and the national syndicates are mo distinct organi- 
zations, the former controls the latter in order that syndical activity may 
proceed within limits of national and producthistic principles. The po- 
litical organs of the Party must see to it that the national principle be 
respected and must avail themselves of the work of the gruppi di com- 
peten%a to control the economic activities of the syndicates. We must 
have the energy to act against the national syndicates when they do not 
respect the conditions which w‘e have laid dowm for liberty of organiza- 
tion, just as we acted against the red and the white syndicates. ... I 
do not believe a forced cultivation of syndical unity to be opportune. 
The political organizations of the party must not be brought into play 
to suppress those competing syndicates that accept our nationalist and 
productivist postulates. We must let live all those organizations that 
obey these principles. Unity favors both capitalistic and labor parasit- 
ism. The economic situation of the nation does not permit parasitism.” 
{Discorsij pp. 180-182.) 

A political economy that frees the mechanisms of production and ex- 
change from all incumbrances is more effective in producing income than 
increased tax rates and new taxes can possibly be for an organism that 
is fettered in its initiatives and movements. We shall therefore follow 
this indirect financial criterion according to which the interests of private 
economy are reconciled with the interests of the state and of public 
finance. Let me tell you plainly a financial policy based on the persecu- 
tion of capital is a mad policy. The economic straits of a nation 
demand a continual influx of capital in order that it may be preserved 
and may make progress. Rather than prevent the extinction of capi- 
tal by bringing pressure to bear on reinvested savings that have been 
robbed by the state from private enterprise, it is d«irable to bring pres- 
sure to bear on consumption and that too in the true and definite in- 
terests of the pcx>rest classes of the population. The struggle against the 
accumulation of private capital falls badk on the shoulders of the laborers. 



302 MUSSOLINI INTRODUCES HIMSELF 

We shall welcome instead, in so far as present conditions allow it, the 
accumulation of saving/’ (Discorsi^ pp. 190-19 1.) 


No. 15. The Proclamation of the Ouadrumvirate 

October 29, 1922. 

" Fascisti! Italians ! 

The hour of decisive battle has sounded. Four years ago, at this 
time, the national army started the supreme offensive that led to victory; 
today, the army of black shirts reasserts this mutilated victory and, 
desperately pushing on Rome, is leading it to the glory of the Campl- 
doglio. From today on the Principi and Triari are mobilized. The 
marshal law of fascism goes into full force. Under the order of the 
Duce the military, political and administrative powers of the Party 
leaders are being assumed by a secret quadrumvirate of action with 
dictatorial powers. 

The army, the reser\x and supreme safeguard of the nation, must 
not take part in the struggle. Fascism renews its highest esteem for 
the army of \lttorio Venito, Nor is fascism marching against the 
officers of public order; but against a political class of imbeciles and 
delinquents who for four long years have not been able to give the nation 
a government. The classes that compose the productive bourgeoisie 
know^ that fascism wants to impose a single discipline on the nation 
and to aid all those forces that augment its economic expansion and 
welfare. 

The laboring people, in fields and offices, on railroads, and in factories, 
have nothing to fear from fascist power. Their just rights will be loyally 
safeguarded. We shall be generous with harmless opponents; inex- 
orable towards others. 

Fascism draws its sword to cut the too many Gordian knots that bind 
and depress Italian life. We call God on high and the spirit of our five 
hundred thousand dead to witness that a single impulse drives us, a 
single will unites us, a single passion inflames us, to contribute to the 
salvation and greatness of our country. 

Fascisti of the vrhole of Italy ! 

Apply your minds and forces like Romans. We must win. We 
shall win. 

Fiva ITtcdia! Viva U Fascismo! 

The Quadrumvirate.’^ 


No. 16. Mussolini Introduces Himself to Parliament 

(To the Chamber of Deputies, November 16, 1922.) 

^ Gentlemen, what I am doing now in this hall is an act of formal 
deference towards you for which I ask no special sign of recognition. 



MUSSOLINI INTRODUCES HIMSELF 303 

For many years, too many, government crises were made and solved 
by the Chamber by means of more or less tortuous maneuvers and 
machinations, so much so that a crisis was regularly called an attack 
and a ministry was represented by a tottering stagecoach. This is the 
second time within a decade that it has happened that the Italian 
people, in its better elements, has overthrown a ministry and has given 
itself a government over and above and against all parliamentary 
designations. The decade of which I speak stands betw^een May 1915 
and October 1922. To the melancholy zealots of super-constitutionalism 
I leave the task of making their more or less pitiful lamentations on 
recent events. I maintain that revolution has its rights. I add in order 
that all may know it, that I am here to defend and enforce in the highest 
degree the revolution of the black shirts, injecting them intimately into 
the history of the nation as a force of development, progress and 
equilibrium. I refused to outdo the victory though I could have. I set 
myself limits. I told myself that the best wisdom is the wisdom that 
does not abandon one after the victory. With three thousand youths 
fully armed, fully determined and almost mystically ready to act on 
any command of mine, I could have chastised all those who have 
defamed and tried to harm fascism. I could have made of this sordid 
grey assembly hall a bivouac of squads; I could have kicked out Parlia- 
ment and constructed a government exclusively of fascistL I could 
have, but I did not want to, at least not for the present. . . . 

I have formed a coalition government not with the Intention of hav- 
ing a parliamentary majority, which I can now do ver>" well without, but 
in order to call to the aid of the gasping nation as many as are willing 
to save the nation itself over and above all smoke of parties. I am deeply 
grateful to my associates, ministers and undersecretaries; I am grateful 
to my colleagues in the government who have been willing to assume the 
heavy responsibilities of this hour with me; and I cannot help recalling 
with pleasure the attitude of the laboring masses of Italians who have 
strengthened the fascist motto by their active and passive solidarity. I 
believe that I also interpret the thought of this whole assembly and 
certainly of the majority of the Italian people in expressing warm 
devotion to the Sovereign, who refused to listen to the uselessly reaction- 
ary and last minute attempts, and avoided civil war, allowing the new 
impetuous fascist current risen from the War and exalted by the victory 
to be injected into the fatigued arteries of the parliamentary state. 

Before attaining this post I was asked on all sides for a program. 
Alas! it is not programs that are wanting in Italy; it is the men and the 
willingness to apply the programs. All the problems of Italian life, 
all of them I say, have been solved on paper; but the mil has been lack- 
ing to translate them into fact. The government texiay represents this 
firm and decisive will. . . • 

TTie state is strong and will prove its strength against all, even against 
any eventual fascist illegalism, for this would be an unenlightened and 



304 MUSSOLINI INTRODUCES HIMSELF 

impure illegalism without the least justification. However^ I must add 
that almost all the fasdsti have given perfect support to the new order 
of things. The state does not intend to abdicate in^favour of anyone 
at all. Whoever rises against the state will be punished. This clear 
call goes out to all citizens and I know that it must sound particularly 
welcome in the ears of the fasdsti who have fought and won in order to 
have a state that would dominate ail, all I say, with the necessary inex- 
orable ciiersv. \ ou miist not forget that outside the minorities that 
carry on militant politics, there are forty millions of first-rate Italians 
w'ho'work, reproduce, perpetuate the deep bases of the race, and demand 
and have a right to demand that they be not thrown into chronic dis- 
order, the sure prelude to general ruin. ... 

As far as possible, I do not want to govern against the Chamber; but 
the Chamber must feel its particular situation which makes it subject to 
being dissolved within two days or tivo years. W^e demand full powers 
because we want to assume full responsibility. Without full power 
you know very “well that it would be impossible to make a single lira^ 
I repeat a single lira of economy. Hereby I do not intend to exclude vol- 
untaiy^ cooperation "which we shall accept cordially vrhether it comes 
from deputies, senators, or competent private citizens. All of us have 
a religious sense of our difficult task. The country encourages us and 
waits. Let us not give it mere words but deeds. W e formally and sol- 
emnly assume the task of balancing the budget and we shall balance it. 
We want a foreign policy of peace but at the same time of dignity and 
firmness; and we shall have it. We have proposed to give the nation 
discipline and we shall give it. Let no one of our opponents of yester- 
day, today or tomorrow be under illusions about the briefness of our 
stay in power. Puerile and fcK)lish illusions like those of yesterday- 
Our government has formidable bases in the consciousness of the 
nation and is sustained by the best and freshest Italian generations- 
There is no doubt that in these last days an enormous step has been 
made toward the unification of their minds. Our country of Italy has 
once more found itselL from the North to the South, from the continent 
to our numerous islands which will never again be forgotten, from the 
metropolis to the busy colonies of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. 
Gentlemen, do not throw any more vain prattle at the nation. Fifty-two 
members scheduled to speak on my remarks are too many. Rather 
let us get to work with dean hearts and alert minds to bring prosperity 
and greatness to our country. 

And God help me to bring this my arduous task to a victorious end.’’ 

(To the Senate, November i6, 1922.) 

Honorable Senators: the whole first part of the declarations I read 
recently in the Chamber of Deputies does not concern the Senate in 
the least. I must not use the necessarily severe language before the 



THE MORAL REVOLT 305 

Senate which I had to use before the Honorable Deputies, Not only 
today but for several years, I can safely say, I regard the Senate as 
one of the fixed points of the nation. I regard the Senate not as a 
superfluous institution, according to certain fantastic views of a small 
democracy; I regard the Senate instead as a form of the state, as a re- 
serve of the state, as a necessary’’ organ for the just and sagacious ad- 
ministration of the state. 

The last years of parliamentary history have given a character that 
might be called plastic and dramatic to the conflict between the two 
chambers. Italian youth, w^hom I interpret and represent, and whom I 
intend to represent, looks to the Senate with great lively and patriotic 
sympathy. 

I repeat that the first part of my speech w’as directed only to the 
Chamber of Deputies.’’ (Benito Mussolini: In La Nnova PoUtka 
delVItdia, Volume I, pp. 9-17.) 

No. 17. The Moral Revolt ” 

(The following selections are taken from Alfredo Misuri’s famous 
speech in the Chamber of Deputies, May 29, 1923. It was the first 
major symptom of revolt within the ranks. Misuri was severely beaten 
after his speech and later expelled from the Party.) 

It has certainly not escaped the perspicacity of the Honorable Presi- 
dent of the Council that the popular favor, which still follows him and 
his work, is beginning to assume a certain amount of reserve as regards 
fascism. 

The country was not greatly scandalized when it saw him, "wreathed in 
laurels, with his triumphal quadriga pass over the already decayed 
body of the goddess Liberty. The demagogic governments that pre- 
ceded him had reduced the goddess to the state of a common harlot, 
and it was not worth the trouble to mourn. The country has faith In 
him, a faith made up of recognition and of fervor, of expectation and 
of devotion. 

The opponents themselves, who recognize his conqueror’s magnanim- 
ity, though with natural reserve, hope that God will preserve him to 
Italy, because they feel the helm of the ship of state to be in gocxl hands, 
while the last waves break on the sides of the ship. But friends, both 
among his sympathizers and among the opposition, have an aversion 
for his imitators great and small. They will not tolerate the oligarchies 
that are being created around his great and small imitators. . . . 

The Party and the State must no longer be Identified. 

The generality of gocxl citizens does not believe, nor do the sincere 
friends of the government, that it is in the interest of national reconstruc- 
tion to have government powers and party hierarchies continually and 
rmprocally insinuating themselves and supcrimpcwing themselves on 
each other; they do not believe that the national government is helped 



3o6 the moral revolt 

by being entitled, according to soine, ‘ a fascist government. The au- 
thority of the government mnst mount to higher levels. . - - 

The public dees not contest the government’s right to choose its 
principal a2ents, entrusted with great responsibilities, so that they 
enjoy its absoiute confidence. It is a legitimate reaction against the 
ultra-liberal democratic system which allowed agents of the state to be 
members of subversive parties and to carry on a suoversive work 
against the powers of the state itself. 

The so-called ^ injection of fascist blood into the veins of the state 
organism,’ and especially the nomination of several fascist prefects and 
police chiefs, though It followed on a rather hasty sifting, has In fact 
scandalized no one, as a matter of practical principle. 

It is logical that a strong government should be able to count on the 
execution of its orders on its circumference, by means of its agents, 
who should not only possess the technical capacity for their office but 
should have the same type of mind as those who govern. 

In practice things have gone very differently, but all this can be cor- 
rected so that the roads of invasion into the prefectures and police 
offices of the realm be not opened to schemers and favorites; or to the 
improvisations and returns of civil and military agents who had been 
ousted and are being readmitted by means of the baptismal font of 
some complacent fascio or other. ... 

And more, I believe that free spirits still have before their eyes the 
sorry spectacle that the public offices offered on the morrow of the 
March on Rome. . . . 

Ordinary employees, still pallid from the unaccustomed event, super- 
intendents of public services with their round Nittian bellies, general 
directors, full of insults, all of them displayed the lictors’ fascio in their 
buttonholes, like lightning rods, and all over the steps and halls they 
began whistling the first notes of Giovinezza! 

In fact one had to ask oneself how it was possible that with so many 
fasciiti already incognito in the capital, it had ever been necessary for 
four years to sow corpses along the road from Milan to Rome. . . . 

Ever since the moment in which the National Fascist Party and the 
government became interlaced to the extent of being confused and 
interchanged in the Grand Council, even when coming from minor or- 
gans and institutions, it has been evident that, to grasp the actual situ- 
ation of the countr}% one must not overlook the fact that every ac- 
tion of that Party is reiected in the government and that every action 
of the government is reflected or should be reflected in the Party. The 
facts prove daily that the former relation exists in greater measure and 
to a greater extent than the latter. Nor can the eye of an intelligent 
observer have failed to notice the general dismay, created by the fact 
that the decisions made at the first meetings of the Grand Council were 
followed by decisions made by the sessions of the Council of Ministers, 
which coincided with them. It wm the Party that outlined policies for 
the government. . . . 



THE MORAL REVOLT’'^ 307 

Following upon the handful of heterogeneous elements that began the 
reaction gathering around a single man, a newspaper, and a black flag^ 
with a few simple schematic postulates, there gravitated toward them and 
was absorbed by them a little of everything from all directions. Fas- 
cism's travail lies precisely here. 

The sound nucleus remains but it is submerged beneath the scum 
of present errors. The grafters by the strength of their numbers have 
outweighed the zeal of the Templars. The few rebels of the dawn are 
now flanked by myriads of converted opponents, no one know^s w^hether 
in good or in bad faith. 

An entire party of more than a hundred thousand men has been en- 
slaved rather than absorbed, and the passions are raging of all those 
w'hose dignity was not sufhclently safeguarded. . . . 

The vague consciousness of their own unpreparedness exaggerates the 
boldness manifested by the youngest; embitters their intransigence 
against the more experienced, who were first held as critics and then 
changed to advisors, who were first obnoxious pedants and then willing 
participators in the work of civic reconstruction. And as the circle 
of intransigence narrowed, everything that did not fit in with the lively 
improvisations of the most recent Chrysostoms, great and small, who 
grow in sw^arms from the Viminal Palace to the Fascia of Vattelapesca, 
was taken as an anti-fascist manifestation, as perhaps this my con- 
versation wutli the government under the public gaze may be classified 
by some (certainly by the Papal o d^Italia) as anti-fascist, when it 
is intended to be, and Is, fervently inspired by the desire to codperate 
In inserting a restored and healthy fascism more deeply into the national 
life. 

This mania for creating taboos, this dread of everything and every- 
body, is a symptom of weakness and fear in weak oligarchies when they 
appear most formidable. 

The Honorable President of the Council, who is a strong man, does 
not share these dreads and wisely holds his course among honest agree- 
ments- The loyal cooperation which has been solemnly reaffirmed 
toward him by the Liberals in these days, is not without significance. 
Also in respect to certain democratic factions such agreements can be 
greatly strengthened and eventually extended to all men of good will, 
who put the salvation of the public affairs before the narrow selfishnm 
of their party. But all this is due to his own action and personal pres- 
tige, to the confidence that he Inspires personally. . , . 

The mind of the Duce^ though weighty, is t<X) much preoccupied with 
the serious problems of foreign policy to be able to follow the many- 
sided internal life of the country by a daily report and a few telephonic 
communications from the Viminal Palace; all the more so since he 
cannot even have an objective view of the situation from the news- 
papers because of the one-sided activity of the Press Office and because 
of the padded opposition of non-official opposition organs. 

Italy demands the coordination of internal politics. Whether the 



3o8 election incidents 

nomination of a ^vlinister of the Interior is needed, or whether it is 
preferable to let a group of under-secretaries rule, either must be solely 
responsible under the Duce, for the conduct of internal politics. But 
too often, beside him, and often even with those functions usurped 
by the super-minister, the dominant party has set up as a general 
secretary, its ineffable Secretary General/ ... a person not nomi- 
nated by the people or the Crown, who by the influence of a party, even 
though it be the strongest and most meritorious, acquires a supernatural 
power, and brings his own pleasantries and bad taste into the very seri- 
ous concern that modern public life is, invading ever>-body’s field and 
superimposing himself on everybody, — the people does not under- 
stand him and will not tolerate him. Absolutely. The system in actual 
use is that of discounting those who are chosen by the people even when 
fasdstL I believe that, except a few members of the government, more 
or less all the members of the parliamentary fascist group, who were 
certainly the most legitimate representatives of early fascism and of 
the sound part of the nation that allied itself "with fascism, are farced 
to move on a ground that has been undermined by the invasion of local 
bureaucrats and by the subjection of the tvill of the masses to the oli- 
garchy; it is the directors W’^ho are substituting themselves for electoral 
bodies. 

Remember the first moral defeat of a party once fortunate and 
powerful, w^ent back to the well-known cases of invasion of a personnel 
not elected by the people, who made themselves felt by their vetos and 
impositions with which they obstructed the will of the people’s repre- 
sentatives in a critical moment. 

A similar substitution of will and action is not necessary to the 
wwk of restoration which has been begun so energetically and under 
such favorable auspices. 

Wlien the interferences by the action of the Secretary General and his 
folloivers in the central powers of the state will be eliminated, there will 
also be eliminated, as a matter of consequence, the interferences of 
political secretaries in the ivork of prefects and other local authorities. 
The organs of the state will reassume their "whole vigor and will obey the 
head of the government, and him only. 

A clarification, a simplification is necessary. 

Gentlemen of the Government, tell the Honorable President of the 
Council: Bonaparte overthrew the unfit directory/’ (Rivolta Morale: 
pp. I02--I2I.) 

No. 1 8. Election Incidents 

(The following documents are taken from the election campaign which 
preceded the fascist elections of April 1924. The dissident fascist^ 
Corgini, Misuri, Forni and Sala were particular objects of fascist wrath 
because they were waging an independent and hostile campaign.) 

^ Michele Bianchi. 



ELECTION INCIDENTS 


309 


J Telegram to the Prefects of the Kingdom: 

March 1924. 

Organization fascist dissident elements by work of Honorable Cor- 
gini and Misnri is confirmed by the General Secretariat of the P. N. F- 
Please exercise very active watchfulness reporting urgently every 
emergency and above all the possible presence in your territory of above- 
named deputies. 

Minister MussoIiniP 

A Telegram: 

Rome, March ii, 1924. 

To the Provincial Fascist Federations of Alessandria^ Cuneo, Novara, 

Milan, Pavia, Turin. 

Following orders given by the President of the Council and leader of 
fascism with the approval of the National Directory, the Provincial 
Secretaries should consider Messrs. Sala and Cesari Forni as the enemies 
of fascism most to be feared. 

Consequently and parallel with instructions given by the Head of 
the Government to the Prefects of the Provinces, life must be made 
^ impossible ^ for the above-mentioned men in those provinces where 
they have an interest in creating major schisms for the purpose of 
electoral exploitation. 

They must not be permitted in committees or lectures; in whatever 
place they may appear they should be attacked ‘ violently ^ by ^ all the 
fascisti/ 

The attention of the Fascio of Biella should be particularly called to 
this, which did not react ^ as is proper ’ to individuals declared to be 
enemies of fascism and the government. I await telegraphic reply •with 
a report, data, and character of this circular, in order to communicate 
to the Duce that the orders will be executed. 

The Secretary General, Francesco Giunta.’^ 


A Telegram: 

Novara, March 12, 1924. 

I transmit the orders from Rome. I intend that they be ^ very 
rigidly ^ applied. Sala and Forni must not speak in the Province, it is 
necessary that ^ they be barred.^ I await assurances. Fascist greetings. 

The Political Provincial Secretary, Amedeo Belloni.^^ 

From the Stampa of Turing April 6, X924. 

**The Stampa hears from Alessandria of a curious travelling incident 
occurred to Honorable Ottavio Corgini, ex-Undersecretary of State, who 
with his friends Marlcanola, a candidate on the Piedmont list of Na- 



310 CONFESSIONS OF A SCAPEGOAT 

tional Fasci, Revelli, Pagliani, and Balzani, all of them dissident fascisti 
was soiTig in an automobile from \ alenza to Turin. 

Toward midnight yesterday the group arrived near the crossroads of 
Ponte Tanaro, /and was stopped by a group of fascist sentinels 
stationed there. The travellers were made to^ get out and were ac- 
companied in three other automobiles to the police headquarters^ where 
they kept Pagliani and Balzani as a measure of public safety because 
they were not provided wdth personal documents. Honorable Corginij 
Revelil and Maricanola w'ere this morning accompanied to the Central 
Railroad station and made to leave. 

Corgini’s chauffeur, who had remained at the Hotel Europa,^ returned 
that night to the crossroads of Tanaro to take his automobile which 
belonged to a private Turin garage, but found only a heap of wreckage. 
During his absence it had been consigned to the flames. 


No. 19. Confessions of a Scapegoat 

(On December 27, 1924, the new'spaper II Mondo published a mem- 
orandum by Cesare Rossi from which the following extracts are 
taken. Rossfwms at the time in jail accused of complicity in the Mat- 
teotti murder. The publication of this memorandum was the immediate 
occasion for a violent renewal of the Aventine opposition, which in 
turn led to Mussolini *s decision to stamp it out by force, January 3, 

1925-) 

. . Let me say immediately that all that happened, happened 
always through the direct volition, or with the approval, or with the 
complicity of the Duce, I allude to the beating of Amendola, the 
orders for wThich were given by Mussolini without my knowledge to De 
Bono, and which was organized by Candelori; to the beating of 
Misuri, organized by Balbo on the suggestion of Mussolini; to the 
attack on Fomi, the orders for which were excitedly given by Mussolini 
to me personally and which was organized wdth the help of Giunta; to 
the demonstration against Nitti’s villa, to the recent demonstrations 
against members of the opposition, orders for which were given by 
Mussolini to Foschi; to Mussolini’s proposal given to the Quadrumvirate 
that Honorable Ravazzolo be given the lesson which his indiscipline 
merited; to the destruction of the Catholic clubs in Brianza, orders for 
which were given by Mussolini to Honorable Maggi and repeated to 
me with approval. 

I add that daily Fasciolo had the orders, on Mussolini’s suggestion, 
to send to the local fasci the names of those who subscribed to the 
Voce Repubblkana, to the AvantU, to Justizia, to Unita, to Italia 
Libera^ etc,, in order that they might be purged and beaten* I allude 
also to sending Dumini, Volpe, Putato, etc., to France with falsified pass- 
ports issued by De Bono, and with money furnished by Finzi in the 
presence of Hon. Bastianini, in order to avenge the fascist Geri who 
was killed in Paris, I add that Dumini, Putato, and Volpe pc^sessed a 



CONFESSIONS OF A SCAPEGOAT 311 

pass for free transportation, issued by the general director of public 
safety to the director of railroads. 

Besides all these episodes, . . . added proof of such state illegalities is 
given by the menacing speeches of the Diice and by some of his remarks 
in letters. I recall the most recent: a letter to Giampaoli, Secretary 
of the Milan fascio. Among the most suggestive threats, I recall the 
one issued to the Florentine jascisti after the killing of Nenciolini in 
a disagreement among jascisti at Lastra a Signa. In it he said that lead 
should be reserved only for adversaries. 

Other concrete evidences of the polemic activity of the President are 
the notes to the Volta Agency. The most violent were written in his 
hand. Some of the originals must still be traceable, for hardly had 
Mussolini given me an original than I passed it on to Fasciolo who had 
it typed and then destroyed the manuscript. But a group of journalists 
who would gather the Volta notes could easily recognize among the 
calm and sober notes of the Volta Director, the sharp and threatening 
ones of Mussolini. But Mussolini did not limit himself to the Volta: 
the most notable polemic attacks of the Popolo d'ltalia after the March 
on Rome, issued from his pen and can be gathered because they were 
given the place of honor. [Moreover, the paper rimpero several times 
published violent attacks in w^hich one can obviously see the Mussolinian 
prose; one of these against the Giornale d'ltdia was also somewhat 
vulgar. All this perfectly agrees with Mussolini’s temperament, violent 
and diplomatic at the same time, always very changeable, . . , 

The better to illustrate the state of alarm In which the President lived, 
and made us live, I recall that one morning, having read an intercepted 
telegram from a Cremona family which had been sent to d’Annunzio 
with expressions of hearty support, he ordered that Farinacci should be 
telegraphed in order that the persons who had signed it might be purged 
and beaten. 

In this atmosphere of hatred and of fear, the sequestration of Mat- 
teotti, which then degenerated into his suppression, was germinated. 
Hence we are facing a political crime, naturally of the state. As to the 
case of Matteotti there is no direct and concrete responsibility of mine, 
in that over forty days before, I had broken all relations with Dumini 
following upon an indiscretion committed by him at my expense. 
- • . Is it possible that I would have organized an attack on Matteotti 
through a man with whom I was not on speaking terms? . . . Some- 
times, but very seldom, I had given Dumini some hundreds of lire, for I 
did not ignore the fact that he was at the disposition of the Party for 
many investigations and above all at the dispmition of Bastianini 
(for jasci in foreign countries); not however as direct payment, for 
that was not my business, but because he often served me on various 
commissions. . . . 

While I share the responsibility for the attacks on Misuri and Forni, 
always under orders, I know nothing of that on Amendola. I read the 
news in the paper . , . and then telephoned from my office to De 



312 CONFESSIONS OF A SCAPEGOAT 

Bono, asking for inforniation. By the ambiguous manner In whicli 
he replied I understood that it was state aggression, manufactured in 
the family* In the afternoon, my curiosity aroused, I went to De 

Bono’s room. He told me that those (an indecent term) had 

committed a bunch of nuisances. Later I learned that the organizer 
had been Candeiori, Consul of the Legion of Rome. Then I asked for 
the impression of the President, who was at .Milan spending Christmas 
with his family. Dc Bono replied as follows: At first over the tele- 
phone he made a show of anger evidently having some people around 
him. However a little later, he called me over direct wire, and after 
he had asked me particulars, closed the conversation saying that he had 
eaten his lunch with more appetite.’ , - . 

After the killing of the fascist Geri at Paris, Honorable Bastlanini after 
he had talked with Alussolini seat Dumini, Volpe, and Putato to Paris. 
False passports mxre given all three by De Bono, Finzi on Mussolini’s 
orders in my presence gave ten thousand lire to Bastiamni. I believe 
that on their return some more was handed over to them. According 
to the reports whicli Dumini sent me and which were read to the 
President and then passed on to De Bono, the work of revenge and^ in- 
quisition in France had been successful. Mussolini sometimes praised 
the reports, sometimes remained sceptical about their contents. On 
his return from Paris Dumini, wounded, met the President and was 
affectionately congratulated by him. The Secretary of the Foreign Fasci 
had a cigarette case engraved and given to Dumini. 

After Misuri’s speech in the Chamber I met the President who was 
irritated, and he told me that fascism could not tolerate such an in- 
sulting attitude and that it was necessary to punish Misurl immediately 
and inexorably. Honorable Balbo carried out his wishes with the help 
of Bonaccorsi and Consul Candeiori. On this occasion Mussolini next 
day exhibited his extraordinary satisfaction, and made an insignificant 
reply by means of Acerbo. Naturally Misuri might have died. 

Later on, one morning vrhen De Bono informed the President that 
Alisuri continued to insist that the judge should issue orders of arrest 
against the known authors of the aggression, someone said that Misuri 
'would make another fierce speech. At this the President interjected: 
^ But this time that bullhead is surely going to be killed.’ De Bono 
replied smiling: " But let us be agreed; if we must kill him, we had 
better do it before the speech, and then we shall not incur harmful and 
hostile speculations.’ 

Among Misuri’s aggressors there was also, as is known, Arconovaldo 
Bonaccorsi, to whom shortly afterward Mussolini . . . gave an affec- 
tionate embrace. The motion may be found easily, introduced by Mus- 
solini and voted by the Grand Council the day after the attack on Form, 
in which It is asserted that traitors are to be treated as such. As regards 
the attack on Forni, the very evening on which the above-mentioned 
order was voted by the Grand Council, De Bono and I informed him 
that no incident had taken place at Mortara. To which he replied. 



INTRANSIGENT FASCISM 


3^3 

smilmg: ^ Go on. Go on. When one takes the lead and takes it 
decidedly, one is always right,” 

The attack on Form had the following origin: One morning I was 
called urgently to the Palazzo Chigi by telephone from Mussolini; 
I found the President in a really furious state of excitement against Form 
because of his speech at Biella. He was irritated also at Gasti, because 
in the name of their committee he had sent an idyllic sort of telegram 
while Forni was attacking the Party and the government. 

He cried repeatedly to me that fascism had no defensive sensibilities 
whatsoever and that it was always up to him to take the brunt. At one 

point he said: ^"What is Dumini doing? Is he (an indecent 

term) ? ’ For Dumini was the man suited for punitive deeds and he 
knew that he was at the disposal of the Party and of the government 
for these deeds. I tried to calm him, explaining to him that dissidence 
was an isolated phenomenon; but finally I too was impressed and then I 
promised that I would immediately go to Giunta^s office to send some- 
body to Milan or Pavia. 

Giunta and I sent a friend, who was ordered to get in touch with the 
Afditi di Guerra to give Forni a lesson. However, bearing in mind 
Forni^s past, I recommended that they limit themselves to a clubbing, 
although I had not received any orders to temper the revenge.” 


No. 20 . Intransigent Fascism 

(The folloiving selections are taken from the speeches of Roberto 
Farinacci, who was called to the head of the Fascist Party after the deci- 
sion was made to crush the parliamentary opposition by force, and who 
remained in office over a year until after he had defended the Mat- 
teotti murderers at their trial. He was the recognized leader of the 
so-called intransigent faction and is still the best example of a fascist 
local boss, or ras. Among the squadrists, especially in the lower valley 
of the Po, he rivalled in popularity Mussolini himself. He has been one 
of the most independent and violent of the fascist leaders.) 

{February 17, 1925.) 

If the Party has today expressed its recognition of me, it is because 
you, fascisti of the province of Cremona, have faithfully and enthusias- 
tically followed me. I like to recall that when many municipal and 
provincial administrations hastened to vote resolutions in connection 
with the killing of the socialist deputy, the Provincial Council of Cre- 
mona, in a resolution reconfirming its unconditional solidarity with the 
Duce^ refused all signs of reaction and all asscxiatioia with the chorus 
of lamentations. If the government and the Party, after the obvious bad 
faith of our adversaries, had done the same we would certainly not have 
witnessed the funereal dance that was staged around a corpse. , . . 

Tcxlay our adversaries have a single hope: the Matteotti trial. Very 
well, we do not hesitate to declare that the Matteotti trial will be a trial of 



IXTRAXSIGEXT FASCISM 


314 

the oppositions and that fascism has been so much preoccupied with it 
that perhaps it will choose this very Matteotti trial as its electoral plat- 
form. We must not be too severe towards the oppositions; they have 
done fascism a service, for by calling me as Secretar}?- General fascism 
decided the other day to assert its intransigence against every^body and 
everything. 

It marks the triumph of a thesis which I ha\^e maintained for months: 
fascism must utterly disregard all conditional support, as the fascism 
of Cremona has done in disregarding democrats, liberals, and veterans of 
the type of Viola and company, and must rely solely on the forces of 
its own ranks. Had the opposition followed other tactics, had they 
tried to WTest Mussolini from us as if to divide fascism, disintegrate 
it, they would doubtless have obtained what they desired. But no. 
The opposition pretended that the whole of fascism must pre- 
sent itself before the royal courts. What do they intend to do, and how 
can they undertake an effective governmental action; with what pro- 
gram do they come before the nation, being so diverse in the ideas and 
parties which constitute them? Really we do not know. Only this is 
dear, that the aim of all their action is simply negative: to overthrow 
fascism and Mussolini. But we wd!l never permit it, never! . . . 

Perhaps the opposition thinks that we intend to carry on our future 
action by means of the black-jack and of violence. No. The first 
appeal that I shall make wdthin a few days to the fascisti of Italy will 
be to the highest discipline. The squadrist element ought to be the 
best interpreter of my will. All ought to remain spiritually mobilized to 
follow the orders which will be given by us. In calling me to this 
burdensome task, Mussolini clearly outlined a precise program for me 
and the party. He said: we have won a battle. Now we must win the 
w’ar! I am convinced that only by an act of force can fascism assure 
that tranquillity and prosperity to the nation which will render its in- 
ternal enemies innocuous. But in order that the victory may be assured 
us, the nation must retain its full efficiency, and leave to us, and we are 
willing to assume it, the entire responsibility in the face of history, a 
unity of command and a faithful interpretation of the Duce^s thought. 

Already I foresee that my reference to an act of force will give the 
opposition papers an argument for reopening their talk tomorrow about 
a second wmve and another night of St. Bartholomew. No. We merely 
claim that fascism cannot renounce extreme measures of defense if it 
finds its way blocked toward carrying out its precise aim, namely, to 
insert fascism into the state.^’ 

( February 25, 1^25.) 

October 28, 1922, we said: we are making a revolution on the 
basis of this program, to change the present social order. We have lost 
tw^o years; this is the error, the greatest error of fascism. And in con- 



INTRANSIGENT FASCISM 315 

fessing it we must look to its remedy. What have we done? We 
have allowed Giolitti to fiddle for us, we have been moved to tears 
by Orlando and have been seduced by the paternal affections of 
Salandra. 

We, how'ever, to tell the truth, have always opposed this for we knew 
that these gentlemen were steeped in their past. In fact all our reforms 
have found an obstacle in their old Ideas and in the word liberty.^ But 
they have never explained to us what liberty is. I picture liberty 
as a beautiful woman who has been taken ill and to whom the doctor 
has prescribed an absolute fast, but who wants, none the less, to eat. 
To prohibit this w^oman from eating what may do her harm, is this 
perhaps a lack of liberty.^ To seek to establish tranquillity in the nation, 
is this perhaps to deprive her of liberty? Is it a lack of liberty to 
prevent political strikes? Is it a lack of liberty to prevent demagogues 
from going into the offices and fields and preaching that the land be- 
longs to the peasants and the factories to the workers? Is it a lack of 
liberty to prevent Italy’s being discredited abroad to the ruin of her 
finances? . . . 

No. Fascism’s kind of liberty is that of allowing the country to 
w^ork, to prosper and to make a bigger imprint on the world. Let us 
talk a little about this liberty that our adversaries invoke so much. 
Have you been a^ware, fascisti, that thirty-fi\T million inhabitants rose 
up against us when we suppressed the Avanti, the Monde and the Voce 
Repubblicana? I observed at Milan that when the Cornere della Sera 
was being seized no one was grieved. The fascist government has been 
too indulgent and has allowed too long the publication of unfounded 
alarmist news. Do you remember what was published? When the 
Matteotti affair sees the light, when we can bring certain men to trial, 
some of whom even belong to fascism, we shall see what a difference 
there is between the true outcome of this trial and what has been printed 
by many papers. The Italian people has the bad defect of forgetting 
too easily. It ought to recall how they printed that a fascist column 
was seen marching that night toward the Polyclinic Hospital where 
it burned Matteotti ’s corpse; it ought to recall how the Popolo of the 
moralists, related how the testicles of Matteotti were served on Fihp- 
pelli’s table. A little later they said that the corpse had been dissected. 
I'hen when the body was found intact, they said that it was not Mat- 
teotti’s corpse, but that of a woman with one man’s leg and one woman’s, 
and that it had been put there forty-eight hours previously, and other 
similar enormities. The clear results of expert inquiry have finally 
denied such fantastic nonsense. 

Fascism did not know at that moment what to do. It had lost its 
bearings. It was faced by two alternatives: either to abandon the 
position it had won by blcKxl or to make a stand and face the enemy. I 
was for the second alternative. In fact after the Matteotti crime I said 
one day that I would assume Dummies defense, for if they were going 



IXTRAXSIGEXT FASCISM 


316 

to strike a blow^ at our Party and government by means of that crime, 
we must defend ourselves to the limit, , . , 

The government wanted to make the experiment and to see if the 
Italian people would follow the gentlemen on the Aventine who claimed 
to be the interpreters of the thought of all Italians, or whether it would 
follow us. An opposition paper said one day that if we adopted restric- 
tive measures, the whole people would rise up and overthrow us. The 
Decree on the Press took place, and the people accepted this necessity 
with discipline. Finally came the President’s speech on the third of 
Janoar}'^ and following on it the nomination of the author as head of 
the Fascist Party. The Italian people approved, . . . 

We have a very clear program. We wish to insert the fascist revolu- 
tion into the state. What does it mean to insert the fascist revolution 
into the state. ^ It means to legalize fascist illegalism. Separate incidents 
cannot help our cause. Our strength lies in organization, our doctrinary 
violence must be the strength of our Party, since it alienates the timid 
and the traitors. 

Therefore let our adversaries and false friends take notice of what 
w^e think about these problems and what I now say. 

The Press. The press, hostile or friendly, must be at the service 
of the nation, for the nation must be defended by all Italians without 
distinction. 

The Banks. It must no longer be possible for the banks to cause fair 
or foul weather in Italy. The government must see to it that it controls 
the financial activity of the nation as France has recently done. We 
want to control, for what has already happened too often must not hap- 
pen again tomorrow. One of our largest banking institutions, the Com- 
merciale^ to mention no names, when the rumor was spread abroad that 
Mussolini had been assassinated, did not feel obliged to deny this rumor 
in order to defend the national economy. Hence w^e shall exercise con- 
trol, in order to protect our savings. 

The Bureaucracy. We must accept the bureaucracy, though we must 
mend many errors. When we wtnt to Rome, all these bureaucrats in 
the various ministries, thoroughly frightened, gave us the Roman salute 
as soon as they saw’’ us. We youngsters, somewhat ingenuous and in- 
expert, believed that these gentlemen were sincere, and now we are 
taking the consequences. Today we see that the bureaucracy serves 
the opposition more than the fascist government, and this because in 
it are various proteges of Nitti, Bonomi, GiolittI, Orlando, and Salandra. 
We are convinced that the fascist government, in order really to insert 
the revolution into the state, must accept the state’s executive organs 
after having thoroughly purified them. 

I remember that after the Matteotti crime, when some of us, not 
all, however, gathered around these gentlemen, their shoulders were seen 
to turn. Now that the government has given proof of Its great energy 
they are again beginning to give the Roman salute. But we no longer 



THE NEW CONSTITUTION 317 

believe them. The bureaucracy must be purified^ but not suppressed. 
The bureaucracy is indispensable and remarkable, but whoever of its 
members does not feel able to serve the fascist cause must leave.” 

{June 21, ig 2 S,) 

have always been on our guard against great erudition and 
against so-called very intellectual men, being certain that a firm faith and 
simple and impassioned intelligence, lively ideas clearly and deeply felt 
will conquer erudition and faithless intellectualism, for these are truly 
fruitful and creative. It is only too logical that many of the intellec- 
tuals are enemies of the regime. They are the Pharisees and Doctors 
of the old law; they are the hypocritical commentators of old customs; 
they are those who find a justification for every shame. Their power 
is at an end and young men, capable of sacrifice, have dislodged and 
humiliated them. But faith out of itself creates its culture which 
consists in a clear consciousness of what it must do. 

The new ruling class has been ripened by the battles of life; thousands 
of squadrists are today honest, serious and capable administrators and 
our parliamentar}^ majority has revealed well prepared and valiant men. 
In general, we prefer the rough, honest act!\rity of a humble mayor who 
makes a budget balance that had been shattered by erudition, to the 
fruitless presumptions and the pompous and grotesque gravity of our 
most erudite adversaries; and we are sure that faith, discipline, and labor 
are the forces that are sufficient and necessary to make our country 
great.” {Un Periodo aureo del Partito Nazionale Fascist a: pp. 17--19. 
28-32, 104-112, I54-J55-) 

No. 21. The New Constitution of the Fascist Party 
(Passed in September 1926.) 

Declarations of Faith.” 

Fascism is a militia at the service of the nation. Its aim: to achieve 
the greatness of the Italian people. From its origins, which are fused 
with the rebirth of Italian consciousness and with the will to victory, 
until now, fascism has always regarded itself as in a state of war; first to 
defeat those who oppressed the will of the nation, and today and always 
to defend and develop the power of the Italian people. Fascism is not 
merely a grouping of Italians on a definite program realized or to be 
realized, but above all a faith which has- its confessors and in whc»e 
orders the new Italians work as soldiers, offspring of the energies of the 
victorious War and of the ensuing struggle betw^^n the nation and the 
anti-nation. 

The Party is the essential part of this order, and the function of the 
Party Is fundamentally indispensable to the vitality of the regime. 

In the dark hours before ^e dawn this order was determined by the 



3i8 the new constitution 

necessities of battle and the people recognized the Duce by the signs of 
his \vi!! powefj his force and his achievements. 

In the ardor of the struggle, acts always precede rules. Every step 
was marked by a conquest and our assemblies were but the gatherings 
of commanders and rank and file under the memory of their fallen. 

Averse to dogmatic formulas and rigid schemes, fascism feels that 
victory lies in the possibilities of continually renewing itself. 

Fascism is today living for the future and is watching over the 
new generation as the force destined to attain all the aims set up by 
our will. 

The order and hierarchies without which there can be no discipline of 
force nor education of the people, must receive their light and rules from 
the head, where a complete view of the powers and tasks, of functions 
and merits is centered. 

The Most Important Articles. 

Fascism is politically organized in the P. N. F. {Partito Nazionale 
Fascista) formed by the fasci di combattimento organized into provincial 
federations. The P. N. F. carries on its activities under the supreme 
guidance of the leader of fascism and according to the program deter- 
mined by the Grand Fascist Council. 

The hierarchies of the P. N. F. are: (i) the Duce, (2) the Secretary 
General of the P. N. F., (3) the Secretaries General of the provincial 
federations, (4) the Secretaries of the Fasci di Combattimento. 

The organs of the P. N. F. are: (i) the Grand Council, (2) the 
National Directorate, (3) the National Council. 

The Grand Council is the highest organ of fascism. It determines 
the program of action which the Party must undertake in all fields 
of the national life. 

The Grand Council is composed of: (a) the Duce of Fascism (Presi- 
dent); (b) the Ministers; (c) the Undersecretaries of the Presidency of 
Council, the Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Foreign Affairs; 
(d) representatives of Fascist Senators named by the Duce; (e) the 
Quadrumvirate of the March on Rome; (f) the members of the National 
Directorate of the Party; (g) the President of the National Fascist 
Institute of Culture; (h) the President of the General Confederation of 
Enti Autarchici; (i) the Secretary Genera] of the Foreign Fasci: (i) the 
General Commander of the Militia or Chief of Staff; (k) the President 
of the Fascist Confederation of Laborers; (1) the Presidents of the 
Italian Syndicate of Cooperatives; (m) one of the presidents of the em- 
ployers confederations; (n) men who may be called by the President 
who have given proof of their great devotion to fascism and of their 
noble earnestness in practical achievements. 

The Grand Council is called by the President. The Grand Council 
nominates the Secretary General of the Party, and Assistant Secre- 



THE NEW CONSTITUTION 


319 

taries and members of the Directorate, and determines the general lines 
of the work to be carried on. 

The Directorate is composed of eight members besides the general 
administrative secretary. 

The Secretary General determines the rules of action in the Directorate 
and in the various offices, nominating their subordinate assistants and 
employees. The offices are: administration, Enti Autarckici, the press, 
propaganda, juvenile organizations, feminine fascia Association of the 
Families of Fallen Fascisti, Association of University Students. 

The political secretariat operates by the functioning of the Party 
by means of its peripheral organs and sees to it that every activity of the 
Party corresponds to the spirit of fascism. The political secretariat 
controls the activities of the following associations: (i) fascist teachers, 
(2) fascist railroad men, (3) fascist post office and telegraph employees; 
and works In cooperation with: (i) the Commander of the Voluntary 
Militia of National Safety, (2) the Fascist Secretary General in Foreign 
Countries, (3) the Presidents of the Confederations of Employers and 
Employees, (4) the Presidents of the National Organizations of Co- 
operatives. 

The National Directorate of the Party meets once a month under the 
Duce and whenever the Secretary General thinks it necessary. The 
general administrative secretary administers the patrimony of the Party. 

The General Administrative Secretary is responsible for the order and 
discipline of the whole personnel. 

The National Council of the Party is composed of the Federal secre- 
taries. 

The National Council is called by the National Directorate to examine 
the activities of the life of the Party and to receive general executive 
orders. Whenever the Directorate demands it, regional meetings may 
be called. 

The General Secretary nominates the Federal Secretaries, who must 
carry out the will and orders of the Grand Council and of the National 
Directorate. 

Each Federal Secretary must choose among the fascisti of his province 
seven associates who, ratified by the General Secretary, constitute the 
Provincial Directorate. 

The Federal Secretary is also the Secretary of fascism for the provincial 
capital. The Provincial Directorate must guide and promote the life 
of the Party in the whole province and see to the execution of the orders 
of the National Directorate. 

The Provincial Secretary must also supervise the following organiza- 
tions: (i) the Federation of Enti Autarchid, (2) the Federation of the 
Party, (3) Juvenile organizations, (4) Feminine FascL He must also, 
by means of trustworthy agents, watch over the various cultural, eco- 
nomic and athletic activities of the province. 

The Federal Secretary must keep in touch with (i) fascist senators 



THE NEW CONSTITUTION 


320 

and deputieSj (2) the commander of the fascist militia of the province^ 
(3) the syndical organizations, (4) the cooperative organizations, (5) 
associations headed by the Party. 

The Federal Secretary must call the Provincial Directorate at least 
once a month, and every six months the secretaries of the fasci of the 
whole province, to examine and discuss the problems of the life of the 
Party. 

The Federal Secretary nominates the secretary of each fascio di 
combattimento In the province, seeing to it that the rules which come 
from on top constitute a uniform discipline for the whole rank and file. 
Each secretary of a fascio will call five comrades as associates, who will 
be subject to ratification by the Federal Secretary and who will consti- 
tute the Directorate of the fascio. One of the associates ivill be charged 
with administrative functions. 

Every secretary of a fascio must know the moral qualifications of 
cvtTy member of the rank and file and his means of livelihood. 

Whenever a fascist falls short of his duty by breach of discipline or by 
deficiency in those qualities that constitute the fascist spirit — faith, 
courage, industry', and honesty — he should be subjected to an investi- 
gation by the Directorate. Disciplinary punishments are: (i) deploring 
the faults, (2) suspension for a determinate or indeterminate period, 
(3) expulsion. No punishment may be inflicted until after the guilt 
of the person has been ascertained and he has been given an opportunity 
to defend himself. Every punishment must be reported to the higher 
officials up to the Secretary General and is not official unless ratified. 
A fascist expelled from the ranks of the Party is a traitor to the cause 
and must be banished from political life. No fascio can be dissolved 
without authority from the General Secretary of the Party. 

No fascist who has not been a member of the Party for at least 
two years can hold provincial office. No provincial director can take 
on or hold remunerative offices in public bodies, institutions affiliated 
with the state, and economic bodies dependent on local administrations. 

^ No fascist, even in carrying on his professional activity, can fail to 
direct his work according to the spirit and discipline of fascism. 

The Federal Secretaries are entrusted with establishing the rules 
for the conduct of the various subordinate organizations in the Party/* 



PART IV 


Fascist Syndicalism and the Corporate State 
No. 22. The Judgment of the Solons^^ 

(The Commjssion for Constitutional Reform, composed first of fifteen 
and then of eighteen members, appointed first by Mussolini as Head 
of the Party, ^ and later by Royal Decree, marked the official beginning 
of the conscious effort to construct what has come to be called the 
Fascist State, It was presided over by Senator Gentile and was com- 
posed for the most part of distinguished scholars. Its primarj" purpose 
was to study the parliamentary problem forced on the fascisti by the 
Aventine Secession, but events compelled it to undertake a comprehen- 
sive reconstruction of the whole constitution. It laid the theoretical 
and schematic basis for the Corporate^ State/^ and though its specific 
proposals have been seriously modified, it served to give an appearance 
of profound political wisdom to fascism’s emergency measures. The 
following are selections from the official report of the Commission.) 

‘'^The parliamentary system is the gravest and most dangerous 
degeneration of political custom. It constitutes a complex deviation 
and usurpation of powers. It is not in harmony with the origins and 
historic bases of parliaments. It is evidently opposed to the logical 
demands of the constitutional and representative regime. And what is 
more important, it is an obstacle to the attainment of the higher ends 
of the state. 

In the parliamentary regime, above all as it had been understood in 
recent times, the Chambers exercise faculties that belong to the execu- 
tive power and supplant the most essential prerogatives of the Crown. 
The government, in its turn, usurps the functions of Parliament and it 
too imposes itself on the Crown, denying it the exercise of that supreme 
directive and integrative function that is indispensable for the harmonious 
coordination of the major powers of the state. The body of elected 
representatives is being distorted and deprived of true liberty in the 
exercise of Its mandates. It is natural that under the pressure of needs 
created by parliamentary exigencies, there should be frequent infrac- 
tions of the executive power in its judicial function. 

Historically, since the executive power grew out of the royal power 
with the change from absolute to constitutional government, it was 
reserved for the Crown, of which the executive is an emanation, to set 



322 JUDGMENT OF THE ‘^SOLON'S” 

rules aad limits for the executive itself. Parliamentj which is charac- 
teristic of the representative s^cstem, arose and displaced the ancient 
sovereign body that embraced the whole population of free men in 
order to assure a continual agreement between the laws and social 
aspirations and to carry* on a function of financial control for keeping 
the action of the government within due limits, by deliberating on the 
laws that it must observe and acting like a political accounting body 
in controlling its actions. The progressive growth of its powers was 
intended to limit those of the Crown at a time when the Crown had the 
character of an absolute government, but it exceeded all logical bounds; 
haling robbed the monarchy of the direct exercise of executive power, it 
also invaded the Crown’s own field, substituting Itself for the Crown in 
the nomination and recall of ministers and thus preventing such powers 
from being exercised in view of the higher needs of the country, 
which must certainly not be confused with those transient and con- 
tingent needs of the prevailing political parties. 

Thus the principle of the separation of powers, which is the essence of 
constitutional government and is certainly not to be applied in a rigid 
and mechanical way, is being destroyed. 

But even independently of all this, the parliamentary system must 
be condemned, because it prevents the executive power from carrying 
out its own activities in a durable, careful and coherent manner, in view 
of the higher ends which it serves. The executive power’s general in- 
terest is not the sum of particular interests and hence cannot be ade- 
quately represented by a fluctuating majority, determined by the half- 
plus-one rule, of the political forces they represent. 

The state needs continuity and readiness in action, in its internarionai 
no less than in its internal relations. This necessity is being felt more 
and more under present conditions of life. The complexities of inter- 
national relations have a variety of influences on all fields of activ- 
ity and sometimes (as for example in the highly important game of de- 
termining the rapid oscillations in exchange rates) they operate so 
suddenly that they must be watched and confronted almost hour by 
hour, which requires a strong government, free, independent, and 
permanent, such as the parliamentary system certainly cannot guar- 
antee. 

The coordination of the infinite internal needs of the country, arrang- 
ing them in an orderly scheme based on the possibility of satisfying 
them, and determining which matters and functions should be empha- 
sized, remembering that, though their present utility may not be notice- 
able, they may nevertheless serve distant and higher ends, — all this 
pre-supposes a government above parties, not continually threatened by 
their possible snares. 

When extraordinary events like war or a public calamity occurred, 
and it was felt that the future of the country in whole or in part was at 
stake, the directive activities continually exercised by Parliament were 



JUDGMENT OF THE ^^SOLONS^^ 


323 

always recognized as embarrassing and superfluous, and it was thought 
necessary to reinforce the ministerial body and keep it whole. These 
extraordinary events are daily facts for those who fully grasp the tasks 
and difficulties arising in the modern life of states. The complexity of 
state functions and responsibilities is such today that in the face of it the 
tasks the state once had resemble little more than those of a modern large 
private firm. Hence if the state of today W'ants to make its way in the 
world confidently, it must allovr itself to be guided by a strong and 
vigorous government that is not based on the instability or predomi- 
nance of this or that party. 

The principle of universal suffrage, according to which all citizens 
legally qualified participate with equal rights of voting in the political 
life of the country, Is bound up with the idea that this is or should be the 
best means of adequately satisfying the majority of individual interests, 
an idea wffiich is now’’ opposed and supplanted by the idea that the state 
is a self-sufficient principle, that it is not a sum but a synthesis of in- 
dividual interests and hence has its own higher and permanent ends to 
follow, that it is of a moral and ideal nature rather than economic 
and material. The almost indefinite extension of the suffrage, coupled 
with the fact that the numerical size of the population has reached 
proportions not even suspected formerly, and the fact that the functions 
of the state have been so intensified as to make it more than difficult to 
understand the essence of a political mandate, raises the doubt, the 
certainty, that the system of direct election of deputies to Parliament 
and the modest, but nevertheless discernible tendency to reject even a 
plurality of votes, make vain any direct effort to improve the mechanism 
of electoral procedure. Certainly the abolition of proportional repre- 
sentation, to which the most deplorable exhibitions of the parliamentary 
system were due, has indicated progress in this direction. Then the 
return to the single list {collegia uninominale) marked still further 
progress; for without doubt, where the undermined bases of the present 
order still hold firm, this system among all the systems so far developed, 
and in view of the political evolution of our country, offers the greatest 
number of advantages. But if anyone should claim that we could today 
be satisfied with this relative and very modest progress, he would clme 
his eyes to the facts. 

It is above all in this field that the common fallacy clearly appears of 
those who fall back on the constitutional order formed more than a 
century ago under conditions of social and political life radically differ- 
ent from the present. It suffices to recall that while it is becoming evi- 
dently more impossible for the greater part of voters really to know the 
persons for whom th^ have voted, and that therefore the whde illusion 
of free individual choice is gone, nothing has been substituted for it that 
in any maimer guarantees that the choice fall on the mcBt deserving and 
suitable. . . . 

Of the powers among which the acts and the explicit sovereignty of the 



324 


JUDGMENT OF THE ^^SOLONS’^ 

state is divided^ the greatest importance must be given now as always to 
the executive. It is abot'e all in its action, whether it be in its Internal 
or foreign relations, that the responsibility of the state shows ^ itself. 
And it is above ail the need for action that gives the state its continuous 

coherence. ... 

The lemslative power, w'hich determines the limits between^ the 
action of the state and that of individuals, and the judicial 
power that enforces these limits, integrate and in a sense reinforce the 
executive power, but ii is in this latter that the 'whole life of the state, 
by the logical demands of things. Is summed up. However, in legislation 
actually the initiative for the most part can come only^from the execu- 
tive powerj and this implies that the function of legislative organs really 
reduces itself to that of prevision, of holding to account and of approval 
When the executive power becomes weakened, the action of the state is 
depressed, for initiative and decision in daily affairs can no longer be 
demanded of it. The decline of the executive power therefore means 
the decline of the state. And hence it is of the greatest importance to 
the public interest to keep the executive pow-er high and strong, a need 
W‘hich is always recognized in the times of greatest cohesion, as in war, 
and which it would be foolish to deny in more normal times. The exer- 
cise of the executive power can only take place under the direction of a 
limited number of persons who constitute an organic unity, for its 
action must be ready, sure, unanimous, fully conscious and responsible. 
It is neither logical nor useful to seek the cooperation of many ir- 
responsibles in the action of a few responsibles. Assemblies can give 
general norms and directions for action to which the government is com- 
mitted, they may approve and disapprove its action, but they cannot and 
should not take part in it. Such a participation weakens its action at the 
expense of the state. The executive power, synthesizing the life of the 
state, must be committted to those who are above contingent individual 
interests and w^ho by their position are always able to have an integrated 
view of ail the various complicated problems, seeing them in their 
traditional, historical and ideal relations to the higher ends of the state. 
Therefore it can only come from on top. Even when a written constitu- 
tion expressly ordains it, the executive power can only be headed by the 
King, that is, by the head of the state. 

Without discussing thoroughly the admissibility of the principle 
of popular sovereignty, it is undeniable that when it is broken up and 
distributed among tens of millions of citizens each in turn preoccupied 
with the necessity of satisfying his own personal needs, sovereignty is 
corrupted and cannot in fact be the expression of the organic strength 
of the state. To seek somehoiv by means of the exercise of popular 
sovereignty to participate in the selection of those to whom the exercise 
of the executive power must really be entrusted, is a pretense that is con- 
trary to gcKxl sense and the public interesL 

Polirical assemblies by their origin and aim, must not participate in 



JUDGMENT OF THE ^^SOLONS^^ 325 

the executive power, either by directly cooperating in it or by con- 
tributing to the selection of those to whom it is entrusted. . - - 

The relations between the government and the Chambers must be 
dominated by the principle that the former is^an orpn of the Crown 
and not of Parliament and that in regard to its action the latter has 
the power of prescribing the general limits within which the govern- 
ment may act, approving its budgets and proposed laws and exer- 
cising a check that culminates in votes of confidence. But no more 
direct participation can be In order In the exercise of the functions that 
belong to the scope of the executive power and to the formation of the 
cabinet . - - 

The principle that really as well as constitutionally the government 
is an organ of the Crown, by means of which and under whose responsi- 
bility the Crown exercises executive powder, and that it must in no sense 
be regarded as an emanation of Parliament, implies that the government 
itself may presume to be legitimately invested with power as long as it 
has the confidence of the King. The necessity, however, of enjoying 
the confidence of the Chambers and of keeping a continuous and effec- 
tive initiative and freedom of action, further implies that the Cabinet 
may, w’henever it pleases and on whatever provocation, demand a show- 
ing in one or both branches of Parliament with respect to itself. . . . 

The judge of the situation is always in any case the Crown, to^whom 
alone the recall and the nomination of ministers must belong, in fact 
as well as in theory. A vote, though it is not sufficient to make the Cabi- 
net lose the confidence of the Chamber, may, in view of the particular 
circumstances, induce the sovereign to recall the mandate it enjoys. In 
any case the vote may be renewed without necessarily postponing it to 
the next day when the vote of lack of confidence is an order of the 
day, and without allowing the government to demand its postponement. 
But the King too, may invite the government to demand an expression 
of its attitude in the other House of Parliament, This provision is linked 
up both with the principle of the equality of the two Houses of Parlia- 
ment and the other principle that, in deciding a crisis, the sovereign has 
a real power of initiative, direction, and decision.^’. . . 

^‘Proposed Law for the Corporate Ordering of the State 

Division L Of the Orders. 

Article 2. By the'pJ’esent law, all the social activities of the citizens 
(professions, industries, arts, trades, etc.) are divided into three orders: 
(i) of the free professions, arts and public services; (2) of agriculture 
and agricultural industry; (3) of industry, commerce and ownership of 
real estate and movable capital. 

Within the ordem, these activities are then subdivided into categories 
where such exist and into sub-groups. The categories may be grouped 
into S'CCtions. . . . 



JUDGMENT OF THE ^"^SOLONS^^ 


326 

Dimsion IL - t j 

Article 7. In every community the citizens may be registered accord- 
ing to their categories or sub-groups. . . . 

Article Ji. in every province there will be thjee chambers cor- 
responding to the three orders of activity indicated in Article 2. . . . 

Ankle 12. The chambers will be composed of representatives of 
registered citizens according to their categories of activity. 

The representatives in the chambers will be ejected by the ckizens 
by the categories and sub-groups according to which they are registered 
in their communal registers. . . . 

Article 13, The number of these representatives will be proportional 
to the citizens registered in their categories. The percentage quota for 
the first chamber will be greater than for the others, so as to guarantee 
to it a number of representatives not less than one fourth of the total 
number of representatives of the three chambers of the province. . . . 

Ankle 14.. In the first chamber one half of the representatives will 
be distributed by equal quotas to all the categories represented by it 
and the other half will be distributed according to the number registered 
in these same categories. 

Article 15. In the second chamber, the representatives will be divided 
among the various categories and sub-groups existing in the province 
so that the various orders of interests represented will be kept within the 
limits demanded by the general needs of agriculture. . . . 

Day laborers and salaried employees will have their special repre- 
sentation where they constitute a continuous and essential element in 
agricultural enterprise. However, the number of representatives given 
them will never exceed that of the representatives assigned to the non- 
cultii^atifig landowners, employers and large tenants. 

Article 16, In the third chamber the representatives will be distrib- 
uted among the three sections of industry, commerce and proprietors 
in proportion to the double criterion of the number registered in each 
category and the fiscal taxes levied on these various activities. 

Within each category of the industrial section, where the structure 
of the various firms demands it, a further subdivision will be made among 
them so that two fifths of the representatives go to the employers, one 
fifth to the technical and administrative employees and two fifths to 
the laborers. This last auota may be further divided into two equal 
parts, one for the skilled laborers and one for the non-skilled, . . • 
Division ///. Of the Organs of the Corporate Organization. 

Article iS. Every chamber will have a council and a general as- 
sembly, composed of a number of members to be determined in relation 
to the number of members of the chamber. It will also have a presi- 
dent elected by the council. . . . 

Article ip. The three chambers in each province will constitute 
the Provincial Corporate College, which also will have a council and 
assembly. . . . 

Ankle 20. The Provincial Corporate Colleges will elect representa- 



“TRANSFORMATION OF THE STATE” 327 

tives to participate in the National Corporate Council, which will meet 

at Rome. Members of Parliament will not be eligible to this office. 

The National Corporate Council will be divided into three com- 
mittees corresponding to the three orders of activity ivhich are repre- 
sented by the three chambers in each province. Each* of said committees 
will have its own assembly. ... 

The president of the National Corporate Council will be elected ^by 
the council itself. A three-fourths vote w'ill be necessary to elect him. 
His election will be subject to the approval of the government. - . 

Article 32. When the corporate organization has been put into 
effect political representation will take place on it as a basis, assigning 
one half the number of deputies to the insthutional colleges to be 
formed.’’ (Relaztone e Proposte della. Commissione Presidenziale per 
lo Studio delle Riforme Costituzionali: pp. 53 “"S 4 y 73“^77^ 

I47-IS4-) 


No. 23. The Transformation of the State ” 

(The following is taken from the first chapter of Alfredo Rocras 
book bv the above title, a chapter first published in Politica, October 
1926. Rocco, the fascist Minister of Justice since the Matteotti crisis, 
and a leader of the nationalists, is perhaps the most intimately 
connnected with the supposedly constructive reforms of fascism of all 
the fascist politicians. The brief survey of these reforms given below 
supplements some of his earlier expositions of the fascist ^state (v. 
Appendix Nos. 55 and 59 of this volume), especially his important 
speech on Fascist Political Doctrine, delivered at Perugia on August 
30, 1925, and translated into English by Professor Dino Bigongian 
and published in the pamphlets of the International Conciliation series 
of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, October 1926, 
No. 223,) 

From the legal point of view there is no doubt that the years 1925 
and 1926 mark a decisive step towards the transformation of the state. 
Undoubtedly also January 3, 1925, marks a principal date in this 
field. . . The anti-national reaction of the second semester of 1924 
gave fascism the clear feeling that the time had come for it to govern 
alone and to transform the state or to accept the failure of the revolu- 
tion. Given this alternative, there could be no doubt of ^ the choice, 
and Mussolini, with the infallible intuition which comes to his aid in the 
most critical moments, in his speech of the third of January, which was 
the necessary complement to the March on Rome and was therefore 
eminently revolutionary, opened the new phase of the^ revolution, the 
phase of fascism’s realization and its creation of the fascist state. . . - 

Nevertheless the historic value attributable to the third of January, 
1925, as decisive in the realization of the fascist state, does not rob the 
preceding period of change and collaboration of its important reforms. 
Especially in 1923 a notable work of revision of the I^slative order 



328 ^^TRANSFORMATION OF THE STATE- 

of the state was carried out by^the government on the strength of the 
full powers obtained from Parliament. ... 

From this point of view the first place undoubtedly belongs to the re- 
form of the schools prepared and carried out^with rigid coherence and 
indomitable energy by Giovanni Gentile, which radically^ changed the 
whole school system, from the primary schools^ to the universities and 
which was not merely a reform of organization^ and routine but of 
spirit and method. From the agnostic school, which the liberal demo- 
cratic state had created, devoid of moral content, without ideal scope, 
a mere supply store of opinions, arose the school that educates not merely 
the intellect but the soul, a school with a religious and national content, 
iTorthy of the new history of Italy, 'which is capable of understanding 

and realizing it, . . - i r • i r 

Beside Honorable Gentile’s school reform stand the financial reforms 

of Honorable De Stefani: technical reforms, to be sure, but contributing 
powerfully to the financial order of the state, and leading to the rehabi- 
tation of the budget, the indispensable preliminary of Italian financial and 
economic reconstruction. Suffice it to recall the revision of taxes, which 
at last have a definite and organic order, the revision of the la’w for the 
general state accounts, xvhich has established an iron control over the 
expenditures of a government which has come out of the revolution a 
most cautious and orderly administrator; and finally the reform of the 
organization of the bureaucratic hierarchy, which gave Italian ^adminis- 
tration an order perhaps not flawless, but at least an order in a field 
which for some time had become the favorite field for the activities of 
private interests and demagogic pretenses. 

Lastly we must not overlook the reforms carried out in the adminis- 
tration of justice, among which the most important are thc^e in the 
organization of the judiciary, especially the unification of the Courts of 
Cassation, a long-standing aspiration, but never realized because of the 
insuperable opposition of local interests which the parliamentary regime 
could not and would not resist. 

But after these technical reforms come the political ones. . . . The 
conquest of the state by fascism necessarily led to its transformation. 
Gradually but incessantly . - . first in fact and then in law, the fascist 
state is being formed, totally different in form and content from the 

liberal state. 

I say fascist state and not national state, as some do, for this term is 
more comprehensive and exact. The fascist state is the state that brings 
the legal organization of society to its maximum of power and coherence. 
And society according to the fascist idea is not a mere sum of individ- 
uals, but an organism having its own life, its own ends, transcending 
those of individuals, audits own spiritual and historic value. The sjtate 
too, the legal organization of society, is, according to fascism, an organ- 
ism distina from the citizens who at any given time compose it, and has 
its own life and its ends higher than those of individuals, to which those 



^‘TRANSFORMATION OF THE STATE^’ 329 

of Individuals must be subordinated. The fascist state is therefore 
the truly social state. . . . When one says the fascist state is the 
national state, one tells the truth about present Italy, which is a national 
type of society, but not about the Italy of tomorrow nor about present 
England, France, Japan, and United States of America, for in these 
cases a fascist state would be an imperial state. - . . 

The fascist state has its own morals, religion, its own mission in the 
world, Its own function of social justice and lastly its own economic tasks. 
Hence the fascist state must defend and diffuse morality among the 
people; must occupy itself with religious problems and hence profess 
and safeguard true religion, that is, the Catholic religion. It must live 
up to the world-civilizing mission entrusted to peoples of high culture 
and great traditions, w^hich means using all the means of political, 
economic and intellectual expansion beyond its boundaries. It must 
enforce justice among classes, prohibiting the unlimited self-defense of 
classes. Finally it must promote the increase of production and wealth, 
using, where it is expedient, the pow^erfui spring of individual interests, 
but also intervening, when it is expedient, with its own initiative. . . . 

The fascist state is the truly sot^ereign state, dominating all the forces 
existing in the country and subjecting all to its discipline. . . . This 
theory of the sovereign state is really not new^ for the whole legal school 
of public law professes it. This school has alw^ays taught that sovereignty 
is not of the people but of the state, a principle asserted in all the writ- 
ings of all the teachers of public law, foreign and Italian, and also of our 
jurists, who then called themselves liberals or democrats in politics, 
without really raising the doubts implied by the patent contradiction 
in which they became involved. . . . Superiority of ends, supremacy 
of force: these two terms sum up the idea of the fascist state. The 
whole new fascist legislation tends to realize this conception of the 
state. . . . 

The legislative reforms carried out during the first four years of the 
fascist government have had a great importance on this internal trans- 
formation of the state. I have already noted the decisive value of the 
school reform from this point of view. In creating a school that edu- 
cates character, propagates religious sentiment, forms the national con- 
sciousness, the state has undertaken tasks which formerly it regarded as 
extraneous. But no less important are the laws protecting maternity and 
infancy, and above all the National Work of the Balilla. This great 
institution is preparing to give a military and national education to our 
youth, from seven to eighteen years of age, by means of an uninterrupted 
work carried on in and out of school, which in a short time will radically 
transform the spirit and character of the Italian people. Thus Italy, 
by virtue of the War and of fascism, after centuries of indiscipline and 
indolence, is becoming a great military and warlike people. 

, The reform of the legal codes, already authorized by Parliament, and 
at last on the way to realization, will also contribute to giving the state 



330 ^^TRANSFORMATION OF THE STATE^^ 

that concrete content which it has hitherto lacked. In the civil and penal 
codes the state will assert Itself as the guardian of^ morals and of the 
family. Again in the civil code and in the commercial code the protec- 
tion of private propertyj the indispensable instrument for building tip 
savings and the regulation of credit will be regarded as essential state 
functions. In the civil, commercial and penal codes the political and 
economic interests of the nations vrili be strongly guaranteed, as is the 
duty of the state. In the penal code, the code of cnminal law procedure 
as well as in the law for public safety, the necessity of the repressive 
and preventive defense of society and the state against crime will find 
a prominent place and adequate treatment. Lastly, in the code of civil 
procedure the administration of justice will no longer be considered as 
a passive function of exclusively private interest, but as ^one of the 
highest actitdties of the state, having the eminently political aim of 
guaranteeing scx:ia! peace and of rendering to each his due. 

But the reform which in my opinion has most^ contributed to giving 
the fascist state its physiognomy and fascist action its concrete social 
content, is and will remain the reform embodied in the Law on the Legal 
Discipline of Collective Labor Relations and its related legislative regu- 
tions. This law puts an end to the traditional state agnosticism in mat- 
ters of conflicts between groups and classes, and regards the enforce- 
ment of social justice as a problem, which it must resolve in its own 
realm and by its own forces. By this law the state finally gives a stable 
order to the relations between groups and classes, facing them in the 
position of judge and arbitrator, thus preventing one from oppressing 
another and their struggles from leading to the anarchy, poverty and 
slavery of the citizens. But besides solving the problem of substituting 
justice for class self-defense, the new syndical legislation also solves the 
problem of the organization of Italian society on an occupational basis. 
The democratic system of atomistic suffrage, ignoring the producer 
and recognizing only the citizen, though it was able to be of service 
in destroying the social and political organization of the eighteenth 
century, which had been surpassed fay the social and economic evolution 
of the times, had no reconstructive virtue whatsoever. . . . When the 
system had been carried to its extreme consequences and had done its 
worst damage, threatening to overturn the whole of modern civilization 
into a universal anarchy, the problem of a reorganization of society, no 
longer on the basis of the individualistic atomism of the French Revolu- 
tion, but on the basis of an organic view of society, became imperative. 
The solution of this problem is one of the most important tasks of the 
fascist state, and by the Law of April 3, 1926, and the regulations of 
July first of the same year, it has been resolutely faced, for they organi- 
cally regulate the whole institution of syndicalism. . . . 

And in this connection ... we must not forget the law instituting 
provincial economic councils, by which the state is supplied with an 
adequate means for exercising its economic functions, which it has 



^‘TRANSFORMATION OF THE STATE^^ 331 

hitlierto lacked^ since in the provinces the state was represented by many 
organs^ but %vas absent precisely in the economic field. . . . 

To restore to the state the full exercise of its sovereignty means 
above all to reenforce the executive power. The executive power in 
fact is the most genuine expression of the state, the essential and su- 
preme organ for its activity. ... By a series of legislative provisions 
the powers of the government are being directly reenforced. To this 
group of laws belong: the law on the powers and prerogatives of the Head 
of the Government, Prime Minister, and Secretary of State; the 
law on the extension of the powers of prefects; and lastly, the law on the 
institution of podesta in municipalities and the substitution of appointive 
for elective municipal councils. The law permitting the executive power 
to issue legal norms, thus bridging a gap in the constitution of the 
Kinerdom which was made for a small state in a historic period of slow 
evolution of economic and social life, gives the possibility of exercising 
the legislative power in certain cases, even in the field normally reserved 
for Parliament, to the government, the permanent and supreme organ of 
sovereignty. . . . By giving the government the power in cases of 
necessity of issuing norms having the force of laws, the approval of 
laws is made possible which would never be passed by ordinary 
parliamentary procedure, on account of the opposition of particular 
hostile interests. . . . The deepest significance of the law on the 
powers of the Head of the Government is that it freed the govern- 
ment, by a formal legal provision, from its dependence on Parliament, 
reconsecrating the principle, already contained in the Constitution 
but by long traditions neglected, that the Government of the King is 
derived from the regal power and not from Parliament, and must 
enjoy the confidence of the King, the faithful interpreter of the needs 
of the nation. 

Thus the elective Chamber becomes what it is, viz.^ only one of the 
modes by which the needs and sentiments of the country are made 
manifest, and not the only and decisive one. In a period when the life 
of a great people has become highly complex, it is no longer possible 
to give to electoral representation, based on an atomistic suffrage, an 
absolute value in the government of the nation. . . . 

The fascist state has worked this transformation; It has asserted 
its own dominion over all the forces existing in the country, coordinating 
them all, incorporating all and directing all of them to the higher ends 
of national life. A series of laws reasserts this necessary superiority of 
the state. To this series belongs the law on secret asscxriations which 
aims to put under the control of the state all associations that exist 
in the land, and which aims to be a general regulation, in the mcst 
limited and moderate form, of all associations as such, . . . though it 
has hit especially a particular association, the Masonic orders, which 
had taken root in the state and which in a thousand ways held fast and 
dominated it* 



332 the labor charter 

To the same class of provisions belongs the law on the press^ which 
aims to restrain one of the saddest spectacles in recent Italian life. 
In fact an immense force such as the press is, had been built up in 
Italy claiming the right to remain beyond the law and irresponsible. 

, . The press has a high and noble functiooj but the estabiishrnent 
in the state of a force above the state, uncontrolled and irresponsible, 
could no longer be tolerated. 

And the same thing may be said in connection with the Law on the Le- 
gal Regulation of Collective Labor Relations. . • . ^The phenomenon of 
syndicalism is an insuppressible aspect of modern life; the state can not 
ignore it, but must know it, regulate it and dominate it, dominate it with 
that spirit of absolute impartiality which Is characteristic of it, thus 
being the guardian of the general and supreme interests of the nation 
and not, as it is regarded by ^Marxist materialism, the representative of 
an oppressive class. 

Lastly, to this cycle of laws restoring the sovereignty of the state 
over minor groups, belongs also the law on the legal profession. . . - The 
professions, even the noblest and traditionally greatest, like that of ^ the 
lawyers, are but parts of the state organism, have public functions 
■which they exercise in the name of the state, and hence can not be in- 
dependent of its control Precisely such a control, within the most 
careful and discreet limits, has been established by the recent reform of 
the legal profession. 

Thus is being realized MussoIini^s formula: ^ Ever}Uhiiig for the state, 
nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.^ This does not 
mean, as some claim to believe, the constitution of an all-powerful 
state, that absorbs and oppresses eveiy^thing. No, our conception of 
the state is rather that of a sovereign state above individuals, groups 
and classes; but with the clear and explicit presupposition that the state 
must use this sovereignty not to carr>" on a work of oppression but 
rather to realize higher ends. In the superiority of its ends, in the 
fulfiJment of its mission of perfecting men morally and civilly, at home 
and abroad, rests the reason for its superior powers. Thus the power 
of the state, far from oppressing citizens, is reflected on them benefi- 
cently. Citizens were never happy in a weak and miserable state. On 
the contrar}", only by means of the state can a citizen find the paths of 
his OWE W'elfare and fortune.” 

No. 24. The Labor Charter* 

(This document w’-hich is commonly supposed to supplant the Rights 
of Man of the French Revolution, to be a genuine Social Contract, and 
to mark the last word in labor legislation, was published on the fascist 
Labor Day, April 21, 1927. It had been championed for some time 
previously by Rossoni and a tentative draft for it was drawn up by 
him in December. Rossoni^s draft was more specific and was conceived 
more as a concrete codification of fundamental labor conditions to be 
applied to the collective contracts. But as it got into the hands of 



THE LABOR CHARTER 


333 

the Ministry of Corporations and received the criticism of the politicians 
and the employers, it was modified into a general statement of principles 
having a moral and constitutional rather than a strictly legal value.) 

Of the Corporate State and its Organization, 

(1) The Italian nation is an organism having ends, life, and means 
of action superior to those of the separate individuals or groups of in- 
dividuals which compose it. It is a moral, political and economic unity 
that is integrally realized in the fascist state, 

(2) Labor in all its forms, intellectual, technical and manual, is a 
social duty. As such and only as such it is safeguarded by the state. 
The complex process of production is unitary from the national point 
of view; its aims are unitary and may be summed up in the wxlfare of the 
producers and in the growth of the national power. 

(3) Professional or syndical organization is free, but only those 
syndicates regularly recognized and subjected to the control of the state 
have the right to represent legally the whole class of employers or em- 
ployees for which they are established; to pursue their interests in their 
relations with the state and with other professional associations; to dra’w 
up collective labor contracts obligatory on all those who belong to that 
class; to impose their taxes and to exercise the functions of delegates 
of the public interest with respect to them. 

(4) In the collective labor contract the solidarity between the various 
factors of production finds Its concrete expression, by means of the 
conciliation of the opposed interests of employers and employees and 
their subordination to the higher interests of production. 

(5) Labor tribunals are the organ by -which the state intervenes 
to regulate labor disputes, whether they arise from the application of 
existing contracts or other rules or whether they arise in the determina- 
tion of new labor conditions. 

(6) The legally recognized professional associations assure legal 
equality between employers and employees, maintain the discipline of 
production and labor and promote their increasing perfection. The 
corporations constitute the unitary organization of the forces of produc- 
tion and integrally represent its interests. In virtue of this integral repre- 
sentation, the interests of production being national interests, the cor- 
porations are recognized by law as organs of the state. 

(7) The corporate state regards private initiative in the field of pro- 
duction as the most effective and useful instrument of the national 
interest. Since the private organization of production Is a function of 
national interest, the organizer of an enterprise is responsible to the state 
for the directions its production takes. From the cooperation of the 
productive forces it follows that they have mutual rights and duties. The 
employee, whether a technical expert, clerk, or laborer, is an active co- 
operator in the economic enterprise, the direction of which belongs to the 
employer who is responsible for it. 



334 the labor CHARTER 

(8) The professional associations of employers are obliged to promote 
in every way the increase and perfection of their products and the 
reduction of costs. The representatives of those w^ho exercise a free 
profession or art, and the association of public employees codperate 
in protecting the interests of art, science, and literature, in perfect- 
ing Its production and in following the moral ends of the corporate 
order. 

(9) The intervention of the state in economic production takes 
place only when private initiative Is lacking or insufficient, or when 
the political interests of the state are at stake. Such intervention 
may assume the form of control, encouragement or direct manage- 
ment. 

(10) In collective labor disputes judicial action cannot be attempted 
if the corporate organ has not first made an attempt at conciliation. 
In iedividiia! disputes concerning the interpretation and application of 
collective labor contracts, professional associations have the power of 
offering their offices towards a conciliation. Competence to handle such 
disputes devolves on the ordinary magistrates with the addition of as- 
sistants named by the interested professional associations. 

Of Collective Labor Contracts and Labor Guarantees, 

(11) Professional associations are obliged to regulate by collective 
contracts the labor relations between the groups of employers and 
laborers whcJn they represent. A collective labor contract is made be- 
tween associations of the first rank, under the guidance and control 
of central organizations, except for the power of substitution granted 
to the associations of higher rank by laws and statutes. Every col- 
lective labor contract, under penalty of being null and void, must con- 
tain precise rules on disciplinary measures, trial periods, the amount 
and payment of compensation, and the hours of labor. 

(12) The action of syndicates, the conciliatory work of corporate 
organs and the sentences of labor tribunals guarantee an agreement 
between wages and the normal needs of life, the possibilities of produc- 
tion and the labor return. The determination of wages is freed of all 
general rules whatsoever and is entrusted to agreements between the 
collective contracting parties. 

(13) The consequences of crises in production and financial phenom- 
ena must be equally borne by all factors of production. The data 
published by the public administrations, by the central institute of 
statistics and by the professional organizations legally recognized on 
conditions of production and labor, market and financial conditions, and 
on variations in the standard of living of employees, coordinated and 
elaborated^ by the Ministry of Corporations, will yield a criterion by 
which the interests of the various groups and classes may be adjusted 
to each other and to the higher interest. 



THE LABOR CHARTER 

( 14) When remuneration is based on piece work and the accountii 
the piece work is made over periods longer than two weeks, adequ 
bi-weekly or weekly accounts are required. Night labor not include 
in regular periodical shifts, is to be compensated by a percentage in 
addition to the rate for day labor. When labor is paid on a piece-work 
basis, the piece-work rates must be constructed in such a way that^an 
industrious worker of normal 'working capacity is able to make a mini- 
mum gain over and above the rate basis. 

(15) An employee has the right to a weekly rest on Sunday. ^ Col- 
lective contracts will apply this principle, taking account of existing 
legal rules, of the technical demands of the business, and within the 
limits of such demands will provide otherwise that civil and reli- 
gious solemnities be respected according to local traditions. The hours 
of labor must be scrupulously and intensively observed by the em- 
ployee. 

(16) After a year of uninterrupted seiwice, an employee of a steadily 
working firm has the right to an annual paid vacation. 

( 17) In steadily working firms the laborer has the right, in the case of 
an interruption in labor relations by dismissal without his fault, to an 
indemnity proportional to his years of service. Such an indemnity 
must be paid also in the case of the death of the laborer. 

(18) In steadily w^orking firms a change of owners does not abolish 
the labor contract and the personnel employed retains its rights toward 
the new employer. Similarly, sickness of an employee -wkkh does not 
exceed a determined duration does not break the labor contract. Being 
called to arms or service in the militia is no cause for dismissal. 

(19) Infractions of discipline and acts which disturb the normal run 
of a firm committed by employees are punished, according to their seri- 
ousness, by a fine, suspension from work, and in serious cases by immedi- 
ate dismissal without indemnity. The cases in which the employer can 
impose fines, suspension or immediate dismissal without indemnity will 
be specified. 

(20) A new employee is subject to a trial period during which the 
breaking of the contract by either party can take place with mere pay- 
ment of wages for the time in which the employee was actually engaged 
in wort. 

(21) Collective labor contracts extend their benefits and okdpline 
also to domestic workers. Special rules will be given by the state to 
assure cleanliness and wholesomeness of domestic labur. 

Of Employment Offices, 

I (22) Only the state can ascertain and control matters of the employ- 
ment and unemployment of laborers, and of the complex index of con- 
ditions of production and laborJ) 

(23) Employment offices on an equal basis are under the control of 



LOYAL INDUSTRIALISTS 


.orp orate bodies. Employers are obliged to employ laborers legis- 

.d at these offices and have the privilege of selecting from the list 
. those registered, giving preference to members of the Party of Fascist 
Syndicates in order of the length of their membership, 

{24) Professional associations of laborers are obliged to exercise a 
selective activity among laborers, intended to raise continually their 
technical capacity and moral standing. 

Of Insurance, Aid, Education and Instruction. 

(25) The corporate organs must see to it that the laws on the preven- 
tion of accidents be observed by single members of the federated 
associations, 

(26) Emergency benefits are another Instance of the principle of co- 
operation. Employers and employees must cooperate proportionately 
in assuming this task. The state by means of its corporate bodies and 
professional associations will undertake to coordinate and unify as much 
as possible the system and institutions of benefits- 

(27) The fascist state proposes: (i) the perfecting of accident insur- 
ance; (2) the improvement and extension of maternity insurance; (3) 
insurance against industrial diseases, and tuberculosis, as an approach 
to a genera! insurance against all sickness; (4) the perfecting of insur- 
ance for the involuntarily unemployed; (5) the adoption of special 
forms of endowment insurance for young laborers. 

(28) The administrative and judicial representatives of employees’ 
associations are charged with overseeing accident insurance and social 
msurance. In collective labor contracts provision will be made as far as 
technically possible for the formation of mutual sickness funds, contrib- 
uted to both by employees and by employers and administered by 
representatives of both sides under the supervision of the corporate 
bodies. 

(29) Aid for those they represent, whether members or not, is a 
right and duty of professional associations. They must directly exer- 
cise their mutual aid functions by their own organizations and 
can not delegate them to other associations or institutions except 
for genera! reasons surpassing the interests of any single group of 
producers. 

(30) Education and instruction, especially the professional instruc- 
tion of those they represent, members and non-members, is one of the 
principal duties of professional associations. They must aid the work 
of the national organization of Dopolavoro and other educational 
movements/’ 


No. 25. Loyed Indus tridists. 

(The following is taken from^ a manifesto issued by A. S. Benni, the 
President of the General Fascist Confederation of Industry, on May 



LOYAL INDUSTRIALISTS 


337 

165 1927^ on the occasion of the government's pressure to reduce prices 
because of the deflation. The Confederation of Industry is the official 
organization and mouthpiece of Italian industrial employers.) 

“ The Head of the Government is today outlining his program for the 
internal increased value of the lira^ which must increase its purchasing 
power even for the whole of strictly Italian production. 

The General Fascist Confederation of Industry wants all industrialists 
to direct all their actions to this most noble end. Several industrialists, 
in fact, have already diminished their profits in these last months, others 
have abolished them and still others have sold below cost, and of this 
the noticeable reduction of wholesale prices and export prices even at a 
material loss is eloquent proof. But this is not enough: it Is passive 
resistance, not positive effort. 

Costs must now be reduced. The decided rapidity and intensity of 
the process makes it indispensable above all to take recourse to a re- 
duction of salaries, since they represent one of the most important ele- 
ments in the cost of manufacture and the one on which material action 
can be taken notv that an immediate reduction of costs is urgently 
demanded. 

Naturally it is indispensable that the reduction be kept within strictly 
necessary limits, taking account of all factors of a social, physiological 
and human nature to which salaries are related. 

Italian workers have with a praiseworthy spirit of discipline always 
proved and will again prove their ability to take account of the needs of 
production, to the fate of which their own fates are indissolubly bound. 
And the example set by state employees is certainly not in vain. 

In other words, the workers understand that the sacrifice that is being 
demanded of them today, besides being absolutely inevitable, will im- 
mediately and mediately turn to the advantage of the laboring classes, 
immediately because it will permit keeping unemployment and reduced 
hours of labor and their consequences within the most narrow limits, 
thus allowing a greater daily return than would be possible with reduced 
labor and the maintenance of present uniform salaries; mediately, be- 
cause it will permit industry to pass the crisis and regain as soon as pos- 
sible the growing rhythm on which the economic welfare of the whole 
country depends and that of the laboring classes in particular. 

At this time the responsibilities and tasks of industrialists are more 
important than ever; they must take the greatest pains in reducing the 
other factors in the cost of prcxiuction which are susceptible to varia- 
tion by the influence of producers^ eflForts. Avoiding waste of raw mate- 
rials, inventing the most suitable means for increasing the return from 
human effort, decreasing fatigue and eliminating all waste of energy, 
utilizing capital and credit most elBciently, applying the technical im- 
provements suggested by science and practical experience, and reducing 
the various steps in prcduction to a minimum — these constitute a series 



338 SYNDICALISM VERSUS CORPORATIONISM 

of formidable problems to which Italian industrialists should bend 
their whole creative activity. It is not sufRcient that^they should carr}" 
production to the level of technical and economic efficiency of which the 
country may justly be proud at present. There is an urgent need to 
do something more and better in order to face the needs of the present 
situation. 

The part which they contribute to the internal rise of the value of the 
lira will re-echo in those factors of the cost of production as well as the 
cost of money and other factors that are beyond their direct influence. 
It is the higher interest of the country that requires industrialists to make 
every effort that their positions in internal and world markets be main- 
tained. The industrialists know that these positions^ laboriously won by 
years of patient preparatioUj by overcoming infinite difficulties set up^by 
foreign commercial competition, intensified and favored by varying 
factors, will be reconquered with difficulty If they are lost today, and 
that it would be an incalculable harm to themselves and to the laboring 
masses as well as to the economic standing of the country- They will 
link their owm sacrifice to that of the workers and will carry on a work 
worthy of our country’s future.’’ 

No. 26. Syndicalism versus Corporationism 

(The following editorials from Critica Fascista were among the first 
open expressions of the gradual divergence between syndicalist leaders 
and corporationist politicians. Since the corporations were turned over 
into the hands of the politicians — the Ministry and prefects — some of 
the syndicalist leaders, the very ones who had first championed the cor- 
porations, feared that their syndicalist activity would be subjected to 
arbitrary political control under the thin veneer of nominal corporations. 
Apparently both labor and employers^ syndicates were alarmed.) 

need not be under the illusion that we have already entirely 
conquered the traditional and characteristic defects of the Italians, those 
defects that for centuries have prevented the formation of an organic 
national will and consciousness. . . . Now that it is impossible to carry 
on political defeatism in the face of concrete facts and the persuasive 
energy of the government, some of these champions of national knavery 
are texlay turning toward syndicalist defeatism. Here and there we have 
had indications of the existence of these idiotic and harmful persons; 
there is grumbling, for instance, to the effect that fascist collaboration is 
turning out to be entirely at the expense of the working classes, the 
shadow of discredit is cast on the new syndical laws, they say that the 
means of repression and prevention will not be efficacious, they declare 
themselves sceptical about the attainment of the ends set up by syndical- 
ism, they exploit the necessarily slow, difficult and methodical procedure 
of corporate organixation by asserting that an organic and functional 
order is impossible in the new state, they try to make light of the con- 



SYNDICALISM VERSUS CORPOR ATIONISM 339 

Crete value and the efficacy of the provisions of the Labor Charter, pre- 
tending that they can already see today what the natural effects in the 
future will be, , . (Disfattismo Sindacale, in Critica Fascista, June 
X5, 1927, P- 229.) 

The posthumous syndical survivals, and above all the conviction that 
syndicates have rights over and above the state, are now evident in cur- 
rent terminology. Too many continue to talk of syndical law, the 
syndical order, syndical functions, and they persist in using this adjec- 
tive in a critical, polemic and anti-state sense, which the Labor Charter 
has sought to exclude, by declaring definitely that the bases of the corpo- 
rate order consist in the inseparable unity of production and labor ^ and 
in the organizing and disciplining function of legally recognized profes- 
sional associations. Thus, excessively independent attitudes are not 
wanting among certain syndical directors towards the state and towards 
the authorities which represent it; and there is a neglect of cooperation 
even in details and an exaggerated regard for the vindication of particu- 
lar interests. Those who govern the associations of employers and work- 
ers in the provinces do not always observe with the proper solicitude and 
intelligence the politics which the Head of the Government and Minister 
of Corporations has established by means of the corresponding ministry 
and by the confederate and federate bodies and which tend to constitute 
the solid skeleton of the regime and ought to transmit that marvellous 
governing will that is the supreme virtue of the regime itself to all 
spheres of the nation. Moreover, some of them even present themselves 
as the nearest heirs of the old parliamentary privileges and pretend to 
exercise in the life of the state, on the periphery as well as at the center, 
the traditional influences of ‘ Member of Parliament/ without taking into 
account that whatever be the solution that will be given to the problem 
of the legislative bodies of the fascist state, the position of syndical 
representative can never approach, not even formally, that fiction of 
representative sovereignty which veiled the exorbitant political and 
administrative claims of the parliamentary system. The breaking up 
of certain productive forces, which took place in connection with the 
present efforts at price systematization, is the most evident proof of 
this state of things. 

That the corporate fascist system is a system of duties and not of rights, 
that the syndical representative is an instrument of the state and not 
of separate parties, that class interests have no emphasis nor claim be- 
cause they are outside the corporate unity, these are three given facts 
that it still behooves us to engrave deeply into the minds of many syndi- 
cate organizers in the corporate state. And it may be opportune and 
preferable that the energies of the fascist party in which the predomi- 
nance of spiritual motives is most active, be dedicatai to this work. 

Corporate representation, destined to so important a place in the life 
of the nation, can not and must not in any way revive the reproduction. 



340 SYMDICALIS:vI VERSUS CORPORATIONISM 

under a new terminology, of political liberalism, made worse by being 
gix^en a syndical content. . , . 

The reform embodied In the law on the legal regulation of collective 
labor relations and In the Labor Charter is often treated in bureau- 
cratic practice as a partial, limited and incidental reform in the face of 
which the continuance of the old democratic machinery of public admin- 
istration is excused. Occasionally they even refer to the attempt to 
devancer the corporate reform, by putting improvised bodies and com- 
plicated systems into opeiation, that are destined to create situations 
of increasing conflict with the bodies of the corporate order and in general 
represent a m^aste of energy and of means. 

Let us speak clearly; the law on the attributes and prerogatives of 
the Prime Minister is the premise to which the present and coming rules 
of the corporate order are the conclusion. To imagine today, after simi- 
lar fundamental acts, that the structure of the separate administrations 
can remain unchanged, is equivalent to refusing the principle of the 
revolution; a refusal ail the more reprehensible and dangerous because 
the executive power is by force of circumstances called to take the first 
place in the new state. 

It is not merely a matter of ‘substituting mend It is a matter of 
‘ renovating systemsd Or better: it is a matter of doing both these 
things at once, which is more difficult and more decisive. 

To sum up, political syndicalism and bureaucratic democracy, the 
two causes of state dissolution in the pre-fascist period, still persist 
here and there, among the increasingly few remains. Against these it is 
truly necessary that the revolution concentrate its forces.^'’ (In Fondo 
alia Rtmlmione. In Critica Fascista, July 15, 1927, pp. 261--263.) 



PART V 


Fascist Theory and Culture 
Xo 27. Force and Consent 

(This article of IVlussoHni’s was the first outspoken challenge to the 
liberals after his accession to power, and served as a philosophic basis 
and rationalization of subsequent policy.) 

A certain Italian liberalism that claims to be the only representative 
of the authoritative immortal principles, extraordinarily resembles so- 
cialism now half defunct, since it too like the latter, believes it possesses 
an indisputable scientific ” truth, good for all times, places and situa- 
tions. Here is the absurdity. Liberalism is not the ultimate word nor 
does it represent a final formula in the matter of the art of government. 
In this difficult and delicate art, which works on the most refractory of 
materials and in a constant state of movement, since it works with the 
living and not with the dead, — in the political art there is no Aristote- 
lian unity of time, place and action. Men have been more or less fortu- 
nately governed in a thousand different ways. Liberalism is the contri- 
bution and the method of the nineteenth centur>% and is not stupid as 
Daudet believes, for there are no stupid centuries and intelligent cen- 
turies, but intelligence and stupidity alternate in greater or less propor- 
tions in every century. It does not follow that liberalism, which was a 
good method of government for the nineteenth century, that is for a 
century dominated by two such essential phenomena as the develop- 
ment of capitalism and the rise of the sentiment of nationality, must 
necessarily be adapted to the twentieth century, which is already assum- 
ing characteristics very different from those which distinguished the pre- 
ceding century. Facts are worth more than books and experience more 
than doctrine. Now the greatest experiences since the War, those 
which are in continual movement before our eyes, indicate liberalism’s 
defeat. In Russia and in Italy it has been demonstrated that it is possi- 
ble to govern irrespective of and contrary to the whole liberal ideology. 
Communism and fascism are outside of liberalism. 

But wherein does this liberalism essentially consist, with which all 
the enemies of fascism are today more or less directly infiamed? Does 
liberalism mean universal suffrage and related things? Does it mean 
keeping the Chamber of Deputies open permanently because it affords 
the indecent spectacle which had been generally nauseating? Does it 
mean to, allow to a few in the name of liberty the liberty of killing the 



342 FORCE AND CONSENT 

liberty of all? Does it mean to open the door wide to those who declare 
their hostility to the state and who are actively working at its destruc- 
tion? Is this liberalism? Very wellj if this is liberalism;, it is a theory 
and practice of abnegation and of ruin. Liberty is not an end but a 
means. As a means it must be controlled and dominated. And this 
raises the theme of “ force.” 

The honorable liberals are begged to tell me if there ever was a gov- 
ernment in histor}- that was based exclusively on the consent of the 
people and renounced any and ever}" use of force. A government so 
constituted there never was and there never will be. Consent is as 
changeable as the formations in the sands of the seashore. We cannot 
have it always. Nor can it ever be total. No government has ever 
existed that made all its subjects happy. Whatever solution you happen 
to give to any problem w'hatsoever, even though you share the Divine 
wisdom, you would inevitably create a class of malcontents* If in 
geometiy^ so far it has been impossible to square the circle, it has been 
even more so in politics. Given as axiomatic that any provision of the 
government w^hatsoever creates some malcontents, how^ are you going to 
avoid that this discontent spread and constitute a danger for the soli- 
darity of the state? You avoid it with force; by bringing a maximum 
force to bear; by employing this force inexorably w-henever it is ren- 
dered necessar}^ Rob any government of force — and I mean physical, 
armed force — and leave it with only its Immortal principles, and that 
government will be at the mercy of the first group that is organized 
and intent on overthrowing it. Now fascism throws these lifeless the- 
ories on the dump heap. When a group or a party is in power it has 
the obligation of fortifying itself and defending itself against all. The 
plain truth that must stare into the eyes of anyone not blinded by dog- 
matism, is that men are perhaps tired of liberty. They have had an 
orgy of it. Today liberty is no longer the chaste stern virgin for whom 
the generations of the first half of the last century fought and died. For 
the youth that is intrepid, restless and hard, that faces the dawn of the 
new history, there are other words of much greater power, and they are: 
order,, hierarchy, discipline. This poor Italian liberalism that is groan- 
ing and battling for a wider liberty is singularly behind the times. It 
is completely incomprehensible and impossible. They talk of the seeds 
that will bring back the spring. Jesting! Some seeds die under the 
shroud of winter. Fascism that was not afraid of being called reaction- 
ary while many of today’s liberals lay prone before the triumphant 
beast, has no hesitation today in calling itself illiberal and anti-liberal. 
Fascism will not fall victim to this kind of vulgar play. 

Let it be known therefore once and for all that fascism knows no 
idols and worships no fetishes; it has already passed over and if neces- 
sary will turn once more and quietly pass over the more or less de- 
cayed corpse of the Gcxidess Liberty.” (Benito Mussolini: Forza e 
Consemo* In Gerarchm^ March 1923, pp. 801-803.) 



LIBERTY AXD LIBERALISM 


343 


No. 28. Liberty and Liberalisvi 

(Enrico Corradini is the veteran leader of the nationalists and has 
carried on an intensive propaganda ever since 1909. He delivered the 
speech from which the following selections are taken on Februar}^ 8^ 
1925, in defense of fascism’s decision to crush the parliamentary op- 
position.) 

When were we free: During the times in which we had freedom of 
the pressy did we really have that other more precious liberty, the liberty 
of citizens? During the times in w’hich the socialists had liberty, was 
there a real liberty of the laws of life, the laws of labor and of national 
production? During the times in which we had the liberty of socialism 
and anarchy and of ever\^ sort of subversion, did we really have the 
liberty which belongs to citizens, classes, national society, our eternal 
country, that is to say, liberty for the state? 

When were we free? For a long time (I speak of that normal and too 
often forgotten pre-vrar age and not of the post-war and bolshevik 
period, which alone our intelligent and good bourgeoisie is accustomed to 
recall), for a long historical period the liberal regime was nothing but a 
regime of oppression of private and public rights. 

When were we free? Years and years passed during which you were 
citizens of the bourgeoisie and as such suffered humiliations and offenses, 
were persecuted as a class to be destroyed. Years and years passed 
in which you were owners of property by heredity or by the fruit of your 
labor, and as such suffered humiliations and offenses and were perse- 
cuted as usurpers to be plundered. . . - 

The liberal state was in itself without liberty both in peace and in 
war. It was without liberty and in its organs and functions lived under 
condemnation. It was without liberty to defend Itself and to defend 
order when it was besieged and stormed in open day. It was without 
liberty in its international action and foreign policy. . . . After the 
War the state was without liberty to defend itself and to defend the 
victory and its fruits, I need not say in the face of foreign competitions 
but in the face of its own subjects who betrayed it. The state in Italy^ 
for a quarter of a century, in peace and in war, from the defeat at Adua 
to the victory of Vittorio Veneto, was without liberty; the state, the 
organic nation itself in its historic life, was under the suggestion of its 
own subjects who come and go day by day. And such a regime was 
called liberalism and democra-cy. And the old parties and old men in 
Parliament and government accompanied it to its ruin — until the 
salvation of the state by the grace of Gcrf and the will of the na- 
tion was assumed by fascism and attained by the March on 
Rome. . , , 

Fascism has the right to govern Italy, because only it has the strength, 
because only it is strength, and the rest is weakness and the residuum 



344 GENTILE^S VERSION OF FASCISM 

of weakness,, dissolution and the residutun of dissolution, pushing the 
nation and the state towards dissolution. 

Fascism has the right to govern Italy because it alone is a product 
of the new Italy, of the \rictory, and the rest is pre-war residuum. 

Fascism has the right to govern Italy because it alone has a program 
for the future of Italy, and the rest has exhausted Itself in the past. 

And I add that fascism, since it has the right to govern Italy, has the 
right, when the opposition of old parties and old men is raised against 
it, to use force in repressing them proportionate to the force of their 
attack, in the interest of its sacrosanct right, which all revolutions under- 
taken to renew' the life of peoples and states have, of freeing itself from 
the incumbrances of the past. 

For the sake of Italy, fascism has the right to go its way and live its 
life, to be secure in order to carr>' out the program committed to it, 
which program does not consist in robbing Italians^ oj their liberty or 
democracy, but consists precisely and above all in giving liberty to the 
Italian state, fortifying it by new* laws and new institutions, in order 
that it may defend its own free sovereignty in the nation and its own 
free activity in the world.” (Faidsmo vita d'ltdia, pp. 18-22.) 


No. 29. GentUds Version of Fascism 

(Gentile and his disciples are the most conspicuous and the most dis- 
tinguished group of fascist thinkers and have succeeded ^in giving the 
impression %'ery^ widely that their particular brand of idealist philosophy 
is also the official philosophy of fascism. Though this is not true and 
though fascism has no single philosophic content, the idealists are cer- 
tainly predominant and far above any other philosophical group, both 
in their numbers and in philosophic erudition. ^Gentile is no longer a 
member of the government, but his former activities are still very influ- 
ential. His educational reform and the work of the commission for con- 
stitutional reform, of which he was chairman, are among the most con- 
structive and far-reaching of the works of the fascist government. 
Gentile is at present director of the Fascist Institute of Culture.) 

“ We see two Italics before us — one old and one new, the Italy of 
centuries, which is our glory as well as our sad heritage, weighing on our 
shoulders and spirits, and which is also, we may say it frankly, a shame 
from which we seek to hide and for which we must make amends. . . . 
For us this Italy is dead; but thanks to heaven, there is another. And 
one may say in a certain sense, as I shall now explain, that the first 
Italy has been dead for two hundred years. But it is not so dead that 
from time to time we do not find it before our eyes even today in this 
year of grace 1925. There are still too many people in Italy who believe 
in nothing and laugh at everything, who sigh for Arcadia and other aca- 
demic visions and who turn bitterly on anyone who disturbs their 
digestion. . . . But this dd-style type of spiritual temperament, that 



GENTILE’S VERSION OF FASCISM 345 

does not dare because it does not bellei^e, that iees from enthusiasm be- 
cause it sees no adi^antage in sacrifice, that measures national fortunes 
by individual well-being, that always lot^es to walk on the ground, never 
to compromise itself, never to get heated, that leaves ideals to poets, to 
women or even to philosophers, and that willingly lays aside any 
question that might endanger the peace and quiet of life, that likes to 
joke about every^thing and every^body, that always throws the cold 
water of prose on the enthusiasms of poetry and advises moderation at 
all costs and shows a holy horror of polemics and violence, that harbors 
closely all the maxims of egoism, reflects on them, studies and under- 
stands them, and takes them bodily as the quintessence of foresight and 
wisdom; is not all this for too many persons still the non plus ultra of 
the refinement characteristic of Italians: There are Masons who, as we 
knowg ran their notorious lay principles into the ground, being neither 
for religion nor against it; but also outside the Alasons, how many 
Italians are there w'ho still prefer to be silent on religious matters and 
who are reticent and ashamed at revealing and defending their own con- 
victions when they have any? All this is the old Ital}:, the Italy of indi- 
vidualism, the Italy of the Renaissance. . . • 

The personification of Italian patriotism that has given us a country, 
the person to whom w^e always turn with reverent and grateful minds, 
because he was the highest and most genuine prophet of the risorgi- 
mento, the Ezekiel of the new Italy, w’hich thanks to him has finally 
arisen among the nations and now stands on its feet and knows and as- 
serts that it too is in the world, with its duties but also wdth its rights, 
and that it will not fall, will no longer lie low% — for the old Italy of w'hich 
we have spoken, if it is not yet entirely dead, must die — this man w'as 
Giuseppe Mazzini. 

Fascism has returned to the spirit of the risorgimento with the greater 
vigor which it derived from its fresh consciousness of the great trial borne 
so honorably by the Italian people and of their certainty in their capacity 
to fight and win and really to amount to something in the history of the 
world. It has returned with an impulse that tolerates no frivolity and 
no baseness, with an irrepressible ardor for arousing the nation from its 
recent, and to be sure momentary, mental darkness and brutishness, in 
order that the fruit of the immense sacrifice might not be lost, in order 
that the place, finally deserved and already almost reached, of a great 
power or of a nation that has its own will, might not be lost from view 
but might become the object of this will, to be one and to be main- 
tained intact. 

The story is really too simple that explains the origin of a political 
and moral or, in general, a spiritual movement, as a simple contrast or 
negation of a preceding movement. . . . From nothing nothing comes; 
and from the democratic mire in which no germ was hidden, it would 
never be possible to see any plant sprout and grow, nor any vital germ 
of pcditical renovation. The origins of fascism are different and much 
more complex than this schematic explanation of contrast to so-called 



346 GENTILE’S VERSION OF FASCISM 

bolshevism that spread through the political and social corruption of 
the aftermath of the War. ... 

I have heard it said that fascism is not a doctrine and has no philoso- 
phy, that in opposing itself to the disintegrating forces of socialistic 
demagogy and mass rule, with the energy of a moral force whose large 
merit is being recognized and which all in fact seem disposed to admit, 
fascism Is returning to the liberal doctrine, to the liberal sane concept 
of the state strong and ready to subordinate all particular interests to 
the general Interest and to oppose the inviolable rule of law to the free 
will of individuals. I am not of this opinion, for above all I beware 
of confusing doctrine and philosophy with the systematic expositions 
that can be made verbally in well constructed treatises; and I am con- 
vinced that the true doctrine is that which is expressed in action rather 
than in words or books, in the personality of men and in the attitudes 
which they assume in the face of problems; and this is a much more 
serious solution to problems than that of abstract dissertations, sermons 
and theories. A false theory. The true theory is always a practice, a 
form of life; it is the man himself involved not by a blind fatality of 
instinct, but by the conscious convictions and mature proposals coming 
from a sure intuition of the end he must follow; it is the man involved in 
a yes or no who is much more effective and of a much clearer affirmation 
or negation than speculative philosophy. What more decisive negation 
of the value of life could there be than suicide, and what more energetic 
affirmation of Its value than the voluntary sacrifice of the citizen who 
dies for his country, which is the perpetuation of a concrete Ideal of 
life. Hence let us leave books aside and let us look at the animating 
ideas and the consequent significance of the facts that are before us in 
the great book of history which is much more imposing than even the 
most elaborate doctrinary exposition; and first of all let us exclude the 
possibility that of all doctrines the fascist doctrine of the state coincides 
with the liberal doctrine. . . . 

Of which liberalism do we speak? I distinguish two principal forms 
of this doctrine: for one of which — I wish to use the very words used by 
Honorable Mussolini In his speech in the Costanzi Theatre — liberty is 
a right, and for the other it is a duty; for the one it is something to lean 
on, and for the other it is something to be won; for the one it is equality, 
for the other it is privilege and a hierarchy of values. One liberalism 
locates the root of liberty in the individual and hence opposes the indi- 
vidual to the state, which latter no longer has an intrinsic value but 
serves the welfare and perfection of the individual; a means and not an 
end. It limits itself to the maintaining of public order, thus remaining 
entirely outside the realm of spiritual life, which latter is enclosed in 
the inner realm of the individual consciousness. This liberalism is his- 
torically classical liberalism, of English origin, and I add Immediately it 
is false liberalism, or contains only a half truth. It was opposed among 
us by Mazzinl by a criticism which I hold immortal. 



GENTILE’S VERSION OF FASCISM 


347 

But there is another liberalism developed by Italian thought and by 
German, which declares this antagonism between state and individual 
absurd, observing how everything that has value in the individual and 
can pretend to be guaranteed and promoted, by the very fact that it 
stands as a right, has a universal bearing and expresses a higher will 
and interest than the will and interest of the single individual; it implies 
a common will and personality, which becomes the ethical substance of 
the individual. For this liberalism, liberty is to be sure the supreme 
end and rule of every human life; but in so far as individual and social 
education bring about its realization, actualizing this common will in 
the individual, it manifests itself as law and hence as state. Which is 
moreover not a super-structure that is externally imposed on individual 
activity and initiative, subjecting it to a restrictive coercion, but is its 
very essence, manifesting itself at the head of a continual process of 
formation and development; just as everything that is part of the great- 
ness and glory of man is never a natural and immediate quality, but is 
the result of persevering effort whereby the individual, conquering his 
natural inclinations that drag him down, raises himself to the levels 
of his proper dignity. State and individual from this point of view are 
one and the same; and the art of governing Is the art of reconciling 
and Identifying these two terms so that the maximum of liberty agrees 
with the maximum of public order, not merely externally but also and 
above all In the sovereignty assigned to law and to its necessary organs. 
For always the maximum of liberty coincides with the maximum force 
of the state. 

Which force? Distinctions In this field are dear to those who do not 
welcome this concept of force, which is nevertheless essential to the state, 
and hence to liberty. And they distinguish moral from material force: 
the force of law freely voted and accepted from the force of violence 
which is rigidly opposed to the will of the citizen. Ingenuous distinc- 
tions, if made in good faith ! Every force is a moral force, for it is always 
an expression of will; and whatever be the argument used — preaching 
or black-jacking — its efficacy can be none other than its ability finally 
to receive the inner support of a man and to persuade him to agree 
to it. . . . The material force to which I attribute a moral value — the 
context is clear — is not that of a private person but of the state. . . . 
The black-jack of fascist squadrism was intended to be, and actually 
was, the vindicating force of a state whose constitutional powers were 
renounced and denied by its own central organs. It was therefore the 
necessary surrogate of the force of the state itself during a revolutionary 
period, when, according to the logic of all revolutions, the state was in 
crisis, its force was being gradually shifted from its fictitious and legal 
organs to its real organs, which, though illegal, tended toward 
legality. . . . 

There is violence and violence, and no fascist worthy of marching 
under our banners has ever confused the two. And whoever has con- 



348 GENTILE’S VERSION OF FASCISM 

fused them is unworthy of staying with us and will be expelled as soon 
as discovered. There is private violence, which is free will, anarchy, 
social disintegration; and unless fascism is^a word without meaning, 
which not even our adversaries would admit, such violence has never 
found a more resolute, clear-cut and formidable enemy than fascism. 
But there is another violence, willed by God and by all men who believe 
in God, in order and in the law which God certainly wills for the world: 
the violence for which there is no equality between the law and the 
criminal, and which does not admit the latter freely to choose or accept 
or rather demand the punishment which, as a great philosopher has 
justly observed, is his right. The will of the law annuls the will of the 
criminal; that is, it is a holy violence. And, from Jesus down, men have 
always had recourse to acts of violence which they firmly regarded as 
representing law, or a higher and universal interest. . . . When a state 
was in crisis, there were always at hand men of the revolution who 
installed a new state. Fascism is a revolution. ... ^ ^ 

We reached the point In Italy where even the etymology of ^ state 
was forgotten in the general disappearance of the state. At least in 
relation to individual free will, the state must stand, must rule, as some- 
thing firm, solid, unshakable. Law and force: Jaw that makes^ itself 
prevail and does not yield every time an individual does not like it, 
and that does not turn to favor this or that particular group. And in 
order that the state may be this force, it must be power, internal and ex- 
ternal, capable of realizing its own will — a rational or reasonable will, as 
are all those wills which can not remain on the level of mere wishing, but 
transform themselves into act and triumph; but also a will which can not 
admit others as limiting it; hence, sovereign, absolute will. The legiti-. 
mate will of citizens is that which coincides with the will of the state, or- 
ganized and made manifest by its central organs. In respect to inter- 
national relations and foreign affairs, war, as a last resort,^ tests 
and guarantees the sovereignty of a single state in the system of history , 
to which all states belong. And in war a state proves its own power, 
that is to say its own independence. 

This state that seeks to be and actually is the only concrete will — for 
all others can be called wills only abstractly in so far as one overlooks 
the indissoluble ties by which each individual is bound to society, 
breathing as it were its atmosphere of language, custom, thought, inter- 
ests and aspirations, — this state, I say, would not be a wiU, if it were 
not a person. For in order to will one must have the consciousness of 
what one wants, of the ends and means; and to have this consciousness 
one must first have self-consciousness, being distinguished from others 
and asserting one’s own independence as a center of conscious activity ; 
in short, one must be a person. 

But to be a person is to be a moral activity, an activity that wills and 
must will according to some ideal. And the state, which is the national 
consciousness and the will of this consciousness, derives from this con- 



GENTILE’S VERSION OF FASCISM 349 

sciousness the ideal at which it aims and toward which it directs all its 
activities. Hence the state must inevitably be an ethical substance. 
Permit me this philosophical terminology. Its meaning will be trans- 
parent, if each of you will appeal to his own consciousness and feel the 
sacredness of the country which commands you to serve it, by indis- 
putable orders, without hesitation, without exception, even unto death. 
The state has an absolute moral value for us, as being the person by 
whose functions all others have a value, which in coinciding with that of 
the state also becomes absolute. Bear in mind: human life is sacred. 
Why? Because man is spirit, and as such has an absolute value. Things 
are instruments; men are ends. However, the life of a citizen must be 
sacrificed when the laws of the country demand it. Without these evi- 
dent truths, which are imbedded in the hearts of all civilized men, 
there can be no social or human life. 

An ethical state? The liberals object. . . . They claim that morality 
is to be attributed to the concrete individual, who is the only true will, 
the only personality in the true sense of the word; and the state is but 
an external limit on free individual personalities and reconciles their 
several activities so as to prevent any one of them from being carried 
out at the expense of others. This negative and empty conception of 
the state is decidedly rejected by fascism; not so much because it pre- 
tends to impose the state on the individual but because, according to 
Mazzini’s teaching, it is impossible to conceive individuals in atomistic 
abstraction and then to expect the state to mold them into an impossible 
synthesis. We regard the state as the very personality of individuals 
themselves, robbed of their accidental differences, removed from those 
abstract preoccupations with their particular interests which see and 
evaluate them independently of the general system in which their reality 
and the possibility of their actual effectiveness consists; a personality 
rooted in the deepest parts of its consciousness, where the individual 
feels the general interest as his and hence wills as with a general will. 
This consciousness which is realized and should be realized deep down 
in each one of us as a national consciousness in all its power, its legal 
forms and its political activities, this basis of our own personality, this 
is the state. And to conceive it as outside of the moral life is to deprive 
the individual himself of his moral substance. The ethical state of 
fascism is, of course, no longer the agnostic state of old-fashioned liberal- 
ism. Its ethical nature is spirituality, a conscious personality, a system- 
atic will. . . . What else is the state but the reconciliation and unity of 
will and law? Will is will when it is law, just as law is law only when 
it Is will. Hence the individual realizes his own nature In so far as he 
forms a state and feels in the bottom of his own consciousness the in- 
cessant pulse of a universal ethical reality that transcends the boun- 
daries of his abstract particular personality and just as it makes him 
face death when his country is in extreme danger, as if to make him find 
his own true self by losing his illusory being, so it makes him recognize 



35 ° 


GENTILE’S VERSION OF FASCISM 

every moment the powerful force of a law to which his lower instincts 
and passional nature bow. ... 

The state is the great will of the nation and hence Its great intelligence. 
It ignores nothing and keeps aloof from nothing which touches the citi- 
zen’s interest which is its own interest, neither in economics nor in 
morals. Nihil huTticifii a S6 cdwtiuTTi piitcit. The state is neither a grand, 
faqade nor an empty building: it is man himself, the house, built, in- 
habited, and enlivened by human joys, pains, and labors, by the whole 
life of the human spirit. 

Is this state-worship? It is the religion of the spirit that has not been 
plunged into the abject blindness of materialism. It is the torch raised 
high by youthful fascist hands to kindle a great spiritual conflagration 
rin this Italy, which, I repeat, has rescued itself and is fighting for its^ own 
redemption. But it can not redeem itself unless it restores its inner 
moral forces; unless it becomes accustomed to conceiving all of life 
religiously; unless it revives the sound and manly simplicity of citizens 
ever ready without hesitation to serve the ideal, to work, live and die for 
their country, uppermost in their thoughts, venerated and sacred; unless 
it loves the militia and the school, which make a people powerful, and 
labor, the source of all national and private prosperity, the arena of will 
and character. ... 

Fascism was the most uncompromising rebel against the myths and 
lies of internationalistlc socialism, of those who were without country 
and without duties, who offended the sense of right and hence of indi- 
viduality in the name of an abstract and empty ideal of human brother- 
hood. • . . Fascism fought the abstract, Marxian class conception of 
society, and tore down the antithesis by which the artificial myth of 
the class struggle was supported. . . . Then too, fascism fought Marx- 
ism in what Mazzini with apostolic ardor had already fought — Mazzini, 
the prophet of our nsorgimento and In many aspects of his doctrine, 
the teacher of current fascism, — namely, the utilitarian, materialistic 
and hence egoistic conception of life, understood as a realm of rights to 
be vindicated, Instead of as an arena of duties to be performed by siacri- 
ficing oneself to an ideal. . . . The fascist doctrine has the merit of 
fighting it precisely by Giuseppe Mazzini’s method: not by words and 
abstract theoretic arguments, but by deeds, by the ideal which is actual- 
ized and inculcated in youthful hearts. 

We fascisti remember and should remember Giuseppe Mazzini as our 
predecessor and as one of our forefathers. . . . His thought has a pure 
breath of religious feeling. His ‘ people ’ is a term of an inseparable 
binomial: God and people; his ^people’ is bound in his mind to that 
absolute from which it is impossible to escape, through which politics 
becomes, as he said, a mission, that is, a religious life. Hence we fascisti^ 
turning back to find our model in the history of the Italy to which 
we are so passionately devoted, feel that In coming upon the austere 
figure of Giuseppe Mazzini we find the purest and brightest form of 



GENTILE’S VERSION OF FASCISM 351 

our faith and of our ideal. He was destined to arouse in the breast 
of Italians that young Italy which has arisen with fascism and which 
sings with us the hymn to eternal youth, to the springtime of life blos- 
soming in faith and hope. 

Gentlemen, fascism is a party and a political doctrine. But above 
all . . . it is a total conception of life. It is impossible to be a fascist 
in politics afid not in the school, not in one’s own family or office. . . , 
Thus fascism embodies what may be called its own characteristic, 
namely, taking life seriously. Life is toil, effort, sacrifice, and hard work; 
a life in which we know perfectly well there Is neither matter nor time 
for amusement. Before us there always stands an ideal to be realized; 
an ideal which gives us no respite. We have no time to lose. Even in 
our sleep we must give account of the talents entrusted to us. We must 
make them yield fruit, not for us who are nothing, but for our land and 
country, for this Italy that fills our hearts with her memories and aspira- 
tions, with her joys and labors, that rebukes us for the centuries our 
fathers lost, but that comforts us by recent events when Italian effort 
produced a miracle, when Italy united in a single thought, a single senti- 
ment, a single desire for sacrifice. And it was precisely the young men, 
the young Italy of our prophet, that were ready, that ran to the sacrifice 
and died for the country. To die for that ideal by which alone men can 
live and by which men may feel the seriousness of life. . . . 

Modern man is at the cross-roads. On the one hand is the liberty 
of the egoists that leads to anarchy and the ruin of those ideals in which 
man may find himself; on the other, the liberty of men who over and 
above their particular egos feel the power of the ideal, of country and 
family, of the state and law, of liberty not as an inherited privilege or 
free gift of the gods, but as something to be won by our efforts, out of 
which family, state and a higher law are created, and in which resides 
the world’s worth and the reward for our work. On the one hand, 
rights for those who have nothing to give to the world; on the other, 
duty for those who ask nothing of it. . . . 

Fascism is war on Intellectualism. The fascist spirit is will, not 
intellect; and I hope I will not be misunderstood. Fascist intellectuals 
must not be intellectuals. Fascism is and should be an enemy without 
truce or pity, not against intelligence, but against intellectualism which is 
a disease of intelligence . . . for intelligence too is will, and fascism at 
least feels this, disdaining the culture that is an ornament or adornment 
of the brain and longing for a culture by which the spirit is armed and 
fortified for winning ever new battles. And this may be, this should be 
our barbarity, a barbarity moreover of intellectuals! Against science 
and above all against philosophy; but, of course, against the science and 
philosophy of decadents, of the spineless, of those who always stand at 
the window and are satisfied to criticize as if it were no affair of theirs! 

. . . One of the major merits of fasdsm is this, to have obliged little by 
little all those who once stood at the window to come down Into the 



352 GENTILE’S VERSION OF FASCISM 

streets, to practice fascism even against fascism. And when all Italians 
will have come down into the streets, and will think and reflect without 
any longer feeling the temptation to turn to the window, the Italian 
people will begin to be the great people that it should be. . . . ^ ^ 

Fascism is art, for it too is an original movement of the spirit and is 
not a deduction but a creation j and even in action it relies on a genial 
inspiration rather than on conclusions closely drawn by reasoning. 
Certainly because of its spontaneity and originality fascism is art. But 
I should like to complete this definition. The artist himself is in fact 
a spirit, seeking and finding its liberty beyond this real world, where 
toil and pain exist, where an iron law binds the individual, and where a 
force weighs upon man which is ultimately superior to every natural 
or human force, which is called God or Fate, and which no will and no 
science can conquer. . . . Life is art, to be sure, but it is also religion. 
It is the exaltation of our creative powers, but also the sense of our 
limitations and of the existence of something which we are not^ and 
which does not depend on us, something that besieges and impinges 
on us, that presses on us and that demands an account of what we are 
doing and what we are. . . . This is the great force of religion, and 
hence fascism has instinctively welcomed religion, whose neglect in 
the past was but one among the many other signs of decadence in the 
old Italy. . . . Fascism ... is a religion. Therefore it has been 
able to reconsecrate in the hearts of Italians the war and the victory, 
though they had been vilely vituperated; therefore it has reestablished 
a love of martyrdom for the ideal of our country; and therefore it 
stands invincible in the field while its unfit and base adversaries 
abuse it. . , . 

The school must be agnostic neither in religion nor in philosophy, for 
It dare not be agnostic in morals. Hence neither can it be agnostic in 
politics. Agnosticism is a suspension of judgment and a consequent 
refusal to take sides actively with any party. It is the separation of 
one’s personality from life. . . . Now It Is evident that a school which 
takes this attitude instead of performing its essential function as an 
instrument and constructive activity of moral life, becomes Instead a 
fatal organ of disintegration and destruction of all the fundamental 
energies of a people’s spiritual life. . . . 

Therefore we are fighting as we must, this other sort of secular educa- 
tion that seeks to banish politics from the school. ... To be sure, 
politics divides and the school should unite; it unites by nourishing that 
common humanity by which men understand each other and cooperate 
in building up those spiritual structures by which civilization is being 
realized. . . . The school cannot participate in the daily battle of life, 
in the life of ever fresh conflicts. But the school must prepare for this 
life; and first the child, and later still more the youth, must be accus- 
tomed to giving an ear to the noise of the battle, that is being waged 
outside the closed walls in which he is still permitted to grow, and that 



FASCISM AS A COUNTER-REFORMATION 353 

awaits him with its problems, its diverse and conflicting interests, des- 
tined however to be reconciled; he must occupy himself with these prob- 
lems and must develop a firm will to solve them. . . - 

Hence the school cannot be confined to grammar, to mathematics, or 
to any other material that is a mere ornament or adornment of the in- 
tellect. The intellect can be developed only by developing personality. 
Hence we must seek to understand all things and to love all things 
so far as it is true that to understand is to love. But love must always 
set out from a center and return to it; a center that is a point of view, a 
faith, a pillar on which the conscience may safely lean. . . . For this 
reason we need today a national Italian school, governed by a lively 
conception not so much of the rights as of the duties of the Italian 
people, and that is of every Italian. A conception not strictly and fool- 
ishly chauvinistic. But nevertheless firm and religious. And this is 
politics, a holy politics, and we intend that those who deny it be con- 
sidered not as champions of broadmindedness and liberal-mindedness, 
but as vulgar and miserable profaners of that temple which we must 
jealously guard. 

Liberty? Yes, she is the very goddess of the temple of which we 
speak; but liberty, as you know, is no one’s natural prerogative, but an 
ideal to be realized, a duty to be performed, the highest conquest to 
which man can aspire by means of self-abnegation and sacrifice.” (Gio- 
vanni Gentile: Che cosa e il fascismo, pp. 14-17, 29, 46-51, 34“36, 

izi, 37, 43-44, 114-116, 38-39, 93-94, 98, 107-108, 163-166.) 

No. 30. Fascism as a C ounter^Reformation and Anti-Risorgimento 

(Curzio Suckert (Malaparte) is the leader of a small group of fascisti 
who are attempting to give fascist ideology a Catholic forni; not Catholic 
in a Church sense, for they are anti-clericals, but Catholic in the sense 
that they regard fascism as a revival of a long-established Latin tradi- 
tion which had been temporarily submerged by northern movements 
from the Reformation to the risorgimento.) 

We know our people and the people has known us for almost ten 
centuries. For our spirit is that ancient, classic, traditional, legitimist 
and Catholic, essentially Italian spirit on which those pars once and minor- 
ities, who in a thousand ways have guided our people along the way of 
Catholic Rome, have always based their own justification from the most 
distant centuries of our national history until today. • * - ^ 

We are not afraid to go counter to the common opinion in asserting 
that fascism was at first profoundly Sorelian; its justification for its 
violence is historical, not political, and lies in the Sorelian ethics which 
assigns to the proletariat the function of creating a modern myth and 
a fabulous atmosphere to aid and hasten the ripening of a new society 
according to the natural order of the first Ionian and Asiatic cities. The 
new fascist ethics was bom from that of Sorel, but in time detached it- 



354 FASCISM AS A COUNTER-REFORMATION 

self by transforming the concept of social classes into that of national 
classes and economic presuppositions into historical ones. . . . Fascist 
syndicalism differs from the Sorelian in distinguishing society and 
civilization, and hence does not assume the task of establishing a new 
proletarian civilization on the ruins of bourgeois civilization . . - but of 
preparing and performing a return to the national civilization, strictly 
Italian, thoroughly historic, on the ruins of modern, anti-national, class- 
ist, originally Anglo-Saxon civilization, which from the Reformation on 
has suppressed all our native and natural forces and recently triumphed 
with democratic liberalism and socialism. . . • From the Reformation 
on, the manifestations of the Italian spirit have not been the product 
of a free natural activity, of an independent, instinctive, almost physical 
need of creating, but have obeyed a higher and continual necessity for 
reaction. The rise of the Reformation signifies the end of our creative 
liberty. From the second half of the sixteenth century, we have always 
been obliged to defend ourselves against the same enemy; the barbarian 
spirit which then became the modern, would have gained the victory over 
us and over our nature and civilization, had it not been for our vindica- 
tion and defense. . . . We represent in Europe ... a living element 
of opposition to the triumphant spirit of the northern nations ; we have 
to defend a very ancient civilization, strengthened by all the spiritual 
values, against a new heretical and false civilization that is strengthened 
by all the physical, material and mechanical values. This is our func- 
tion. The first mode of defense was the same as our own last mode of 
the present, and we are not afraid to claim that powerful spirit of 
the Counter-Reformation, historically re-arisen in its own manner in 
fascism. . . . 

We have faith in the people, in its strength, in its instinctive wisdom, 
in its destiny, even more than in its forms of economic defense and of- 
fense. We have faith in the spirit of syndicalism, in its violence, in its 
continuous revolutionary toil, even more than in its daily practice; we 
have faith above all in its fundamentally ethical and religious value. 
We believe as did Sorel, though still too socialistic, in a social mission of 
syndicalism. . . . And we believe, as did Corridoni, in its mission not 
economic but historic, not social but national. We firmly believe that 
syndicalism will kill social classes and will lead to the rise of a single 
class, of a new nation^ of a new gens^ including in it as in a new race, 
born of a mysterious fusion of diverse and conflicting races (the classes), 
all the forms and all the ethnic, political and economic valor of our race. 
We do not believe in the advent of a new society, but of a new civiliza- 
tion, and we are sure that it will be neither bourgeois nor proletarian. 
We hate both equally. The experience of the last years supports our 
certainty. We have seen how Italian syndicalism took the class myth 
of the general strike from Sorel and transformed it into that of a revolu- 
tionary war for Italian liberty, for us an historic concept; and today we 
see how fascism has made use of its own revolutionary spirit of syndi- 



FASCISM AS A COUNTER-REFORMATION 355 

calist violence in order to complete that profound transformation of 
the modern social order . . . from which will rise a single powerfully 
organized national class. Fascism already represents this new class.’^ 
{UEuropa Vivente^ pp. 109, Ii2~ii6.) 

“ That ancient, traditional, historic, popular and ingenuous Italian 
that still lives, notwithstanding decrees and ordinances, in a very ^ civi- 
lized,’ bourgeois and proprietary Europe is supposed to be a residue of 
olden times, which modern Italians should bury as soon as possible if 
they wish to retain their title of a civilized people; it is supposed to be 
a residue of barbarism that shows itself beneath the disgust of the tri- 
umphant nations of the northwest. The actual state of inferiority of the 
Italian mind, our very civilized fellows tell us, in comparison with that 
of modern or rather Anglo-Saxon Europe, comes from this, that we 
have not yet succeeded in assimilating the spirit of modern civilization. 
Our historic morale, which still constitutes the basis of our civil life, has 
now been banished by the new European morale, sprung from sev- 
eral centuries of travail of that first modern revolution, the Reforma- 
tion, a real and genuine revolution against the spirit of Italian 
civilization. 

It is not enough to be Italian, today, to be civilized, so our champions 
of modernity tell us: one must be European. When they talk of the 
years ’21 and ’48, it would seem that the risorgimento on their premises 
was nothing but a kind of providential foreign invasion whose ostensible 
agents and justifiers were romanticism and liberalism. Modern Italy is 
the daughter of the risorgimento, they say, and to those who reply that 
the risorgimento was rather an aspect produced by that authentic 
traditional, historical, ancient, popular, and ingenuous Italy which they 
would have dead for some time, those very civilized Italians of D’Azeglio 
answer that ‘the risorgimento is civilized Europe against barbarian 
Italy.’ To those who protest that the risorgimento was a spontaneous 
and original movement of reaction against the invading encyclopedist. 
Jacobin romantic and liberal . . . spirit of the French and Anglo- 
Saxon, the bastards of D’Azegllo reply that it was rather the struggle 
of European progress against Italian obscurantism. . . . 

The pretense of remaking Italians on the model of modern, that is 
‘civilized’ French, German and English, is common to all the bastards 
of D’Azeglio. ‘ Now that Italy is made, we must make Italians.’ . . . 
This pretense of remaking Italians is based above all on the presumption 
that our people Is retarded and barbarian, closed to the new times and 
an enemy of progress, and that they, the bastards of D’Azegllo, are the 
living examples of what other Italians should become when they finally 
decide to enjoy the modern experiences of northwestern peoples. In 
order that Italians become civilized, modern, European, and not merely 
Italian ... it is necessary, they say, that Italy too should undergo 
the experience of that revolution which opened the new age of 



356 FASCISM AS A COUNTER-REFORMATION 

modem civilization in Europe. But they do not know, or pretend 
not to know, that Italians are by nature unfit to become modern, and 
that if there is need of a revolution in Italy it is of that one which 
will make us return to our own natural and historic modes of civil- 
ization. ... 

We are the defenders of liberty, the liberals announced, and on our 
banners is not written ^ Christus imperat ^ but ^ Populus imperat* But 
in its good common sense the people, who by long experience knows how 
to read the Latin on banners, past " Regna chi pub! We are the cham- 
pions of liberty and of progress in a barbarian and retarded country, 
announced the patriots, as they set out to remake Italians. But when 
the people raised their voices demanding that the promises be kept, 
the liberals and patriots immediately hit them over the head in the 
name of the rights of civilization and, recalling that they were them- 
selves proprietors and bourgeois, they resorted to the usual in- 
struments of usual justice, to spies and policemen now become 
liberals. ... 

How good it is to feel oneself a barbarian in a country where the cham- 
pions of civilization smell like foreigners and policemen. How good it is, 
when all are calling themselves brothers in the name of a free and united 
Italy, to feel oneself a mortal enemy of civilized Italians. ... It is 
finally time to praise them, these barbarian Italians, ingenuous and free 
spirits who remained rooted in the traditions and customs of their coun- 
try and always reappear taciturn and obstinate whenever there are an- 
cient liberties to defend or injuries to avenge. These barbarian Italians 
are suspicious of those who talk to them about justice in their name; 
for they trust no one and ask no one to assume the risk of doing justice 
for them. They do not believe in liberty, but they will not suffer slavery; 
they know how to be free men without fearing laws which they do not 
know and in which they do not trust. . . . They know how to choose 
at pleasure between hell and paradise, and they have each his own saint 
who protects him from being harmed against his will. They go to jail 
without blushing, they respect friendships and alliances. They rob the 
robber . . . and they repay the suspicion that civilized people have for 
them by an ingenuous and timid gentleness of manner. From the foreign 
lands to which they emigrate through necessity and often through 
greed and avarice, they return with the bitter experience of the mortifi- 
cations to which they are condemned by the scorn and hatred of civilized 
nations. They know that the Italian people is the most admired, scorned 
and hated in the world. They return with bitterness in their blood. 
Some day they will avenge themselves on the modern, civilized, patriotic, 
liberal Italians for the wrongs they have suffered in foreign lands. They 
will avenge themselves for the rhetoric of patriots and their deceptions. 
This modern, mediocre, false Italy has little longer to live; it will not 
live.’^ (Italia Barbara: pp. 20-23, 32, 38—40.) 



^^FASCIST THOUGHT^^ 


357 


No. 31. Fascist Thought” 

(From Camillo Pellizzi: F ascismo-Aristocrazia.) 

Is there a fascist thought? . . . 

We recognize only one system of dogmas, that of the Roman Church. 
These dogmas are more necessary to life than life itself; but life, be- 
ing entirely and always spiritual life, goes on every day remaking and 
adding to the infinite web of its values, its faiths and its principles. Now 
fascism is above all and must become still more a ^ mode of living.^ To 
fix a dogma for it, in whatever sense this word be understood, means to 
bind it with a chain which, if it be not immediately burst in the process 
of action, could not help but coerce and perhaps kill all its major future 
developments. 

The doubt, which without a written doctrine fixed once and lor all 
falls into uncertainty and indiscipline, has now been eliminated by the 
experience we have gained. Fascism has always obeyed its leaders 
even when it did not understand them; and its leaders have always guided 
its actions towards the noblest and remotest heights, even when they 
themselves were unable to define the nature and meaning of their under- 
takings in an explicit and simple form. It seems that God Himself, and 
we must be understood with discretion, is promoting and hiddenly 
directing this great movement of minds and wills. 

Our champions, and first and greatest the Duce, have been urged and 
inspired from on high — from these heights which are in every man and 
from which springs the creative flood of will. There is no need of dogma; 
discipline suffices. This is fascism's only dogma. 

And this also explains why the dogmatics of fascism can not be forth- 
coming, in any case, from a congress of thinkers and scholars. We are 
no academy, but a voluntary movement; the problem is not before us, 
but in us; there is no puzzle to be solved, but a reality to be constructed. 
It is not the business of the learned, but of the practical leaders of our 
work to determine, hour by hour, what are the objectives and the goals. 
The ^Thinker ^ of fascism is and remains Benito Mussolini; for he has 
been thinking out fascism by making it. And this is the first and con- 
crete mode of political thinking. 

But you say: if fascism can thus be reduced entirely to action, and to 
action inspired by its heads and its disciplined ranks, wherein does 
this thing consist that you call fascist thought, and how can it be 
distinguished? The answer lies in the question: the kernel of fascist 
thought is contained in understanding fascism in this way. That is, 
in understanding that politics is creative action and will. And that the 
thoughts thought, or the schemes, systems and concepts of social and 
political life which fascism is laying down and developing in its own 
bosom, are therefore not premises presupposed for the facts of fascist 
action, but rather fruits, products derived from its creative action. . . . 

We take as our principle that politics is an original creation of the 



IL DUCE ON ART 


358 

Spirit, being realized in it as absolute responsibility towards itself and 
its own action, and in it creating its own ethical personality. 

It is man who creates himself, but also God who creates man. By 
willing in this manner, man feels a power welling up in him and realizing 
itself, to which he can never deny an absolute value and a quality of 
absolute reality, and also a quality of a transcendent reality. Hence not 
every work of man is good, but only the work of man that is inspired 
by this total and mystic responsibility. 

These truths have always been true, and will always be true, but 
fascism first recognized their value not only in morals and religion, but 
also in politics, and fought under their banner. ... It is here that 
Italian idealism, reviving Its most ancient and pure tradition, has 
carried us to a full consciousness of the religious problem; and here and 
in this sense it is that Giovanni Gentile may and should regard himself 
as the first philosopher of fascism. He has definitely disentangled the 
dialectics of the concrete from the dialectics of the abstract, and action 
from objective logical reflection, and thus has placed the true life of 
the spirit in the sphere of action, understood as a conscious process and 
hence responsible and moral. It is not an accidental difference between 
Croce and Gentile that made them evaluate fascism differently. 
Croce, ^ the last of the bourgeoisie ^ completing the cycle of the liberal 
and bourgeois type of mind in the modern period, shut himself up in that 
cycle and could not gain a sense of the new times, sprung from a renewed 
and reanimated faith. It is not accidental that Gentile’s idealism finds 
so many echoes and moral affinities in the fascist action of today,” 
{Fascismo-Aristocrazia: pp. 45-49.) 

No. 32. II Duce on Art 

f ^ 

(By the following words Mussolini started much talk about fascist 
art.) 

Without art there is no civilization. I believe that art marks the 
dawn of every civilization. When Italy was still divided, Its unity was 
expressed by the rebirth of art. Italy appeared in the world with the 
glory of the Renaissance. Today Italy is a people of great possibilities 
and those conditions have been realized which all her great men awaited, 
from Machiavelli to Mazzini. Today there is even more; we are also 
being united morally. 

Now on a ground thus prepared a great art can arise which can be 
traditionalistic and at the same time modern. We must create, other- 
wise we shall be the exploiters of an old patrimony; we must create the 
new art of our times, fascist art.” (Mussolini, in the Accademia delle 
belle Arti^ Perugia, October 5, 1926.) 

No. 33. Waiting for Fascist Art 

(This is taken from the first of a series of articles in Critica Fascista 
discussing fascist art. The author, Ardengo Soffici, Is one of the pioneers 



WAITING FOR FASCIST ART 


359 

and most distinguished of the fascist artists. The discussion was stimu- 
lated by Mussolini’s statements that fascism must create a serious and 
original movement in art.) 

“ I do not believe that I am making an extraordinary revelation when 
I say that knavery, ignorance, and wire-pulling, rather than their con- 
traries, have been encouraged in these years; that the most stupid 
representatives of the official art of pre-fascism have been decidedly 
reconfirmed by the new authorities and by the so-called new journal- 
ism; that worse still, fascism has always selected its men from those 
whose type of mind, esthetics, and forms of artistic expression were in es- 
sence and origin not merely foreign but clearly barbarous and anti- 
Italian: liberal, Jewish, Masonic, democratic, in a word, anti-fascist par 
excellence. 

I mention no names for it seems superfluous, nor do I cite old and 
recent examples; but is it not perhaps a well-known fact for anyone 
who is competent to judge in such matters, that among base academic 
vulgarities, dilettant imitations of the primitive, archaic, romantic 
and anarchic futurism, imitating German and American models, artistic 
internationalism everywhere discredited and re-arising among the die- 
hards of artistic liberal democracy, fascism has never been able to find 
its own way, to establish the elements of its own proper character analo- 
gous to those that constitute the living nucleus of its political structure? 

I have said more than once lately and I now repeat it, that it is really 
a curious thing to see how the high officials of fascism who know beauti- 
fully how to refute and reject the opponents of fascist ideas, and who 
would laugh at the idea of readmitting Facta to the government, Treves 
to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Misiano to that of War, Bombacci 
to the Interior, etc., do not hesitate to make exactly this type of selec- 
tion as soon as they cross over into the field of intellectual, literary or 
artistic matters. 

This being the case, I was inclined to think that the best policy would 
be to stand apart and see how the story would end; and this not out of 
disdain or despair but only because, being a realist to the core in this 
too, I hold that a movement like fascism can not immediately orient it- 
self in the forest of errors and stupidities which it came to destroy, that 
it is therefore expedient and beneficent for it to stand alone and make its 
own experiences and overcome all sorts of difficulties that stand in its 
way, and that in any case ^ time is a gentleman,’ — the more so since 
by a fatal law of history a movement like ours, being Italian, is bound 
to triumph and is hence necessarily forced to annihilate and expel 
whatever is not ours, not Italian, and to burn the refuse of all that is of 
foreign or impure brand, the deposit of whole decades of our life. , . . 

I believe that the literature and art which fascism should and must 
patronize are those which, precisely because they participate in Its 
spiritual essence, least lend diemselves to a simple definition and the 
excellence of whose character least appears in the present general con- 



FASCIST FUTURIST ART 


360 

fusion. It is the literature and art that can not be said to be either 
reactionary or revolutionary because it embodies the experience of the 
past and the promise of the future; it is the literature and art of equilib- 
rium and honesty; it is the literature and art that may be called both 
materialistic and idealistic, since matter and spirit both have their share 
in it as ultimate categories of life; which, neither new nor traditionalistic, 
neither romantic nor classic, neither heavy nor light, neither cultural 
nor entirely instinctive, tempers the extremes of every experience and 
thus tends to the sincere expression of the mind of the creator, that is, to 
a good style and to perfection. I would say that it is a realistic litera- 
ture and art, meaning by this term what it means when applied to the 
poetry of Alceus and Sappho or the sculpture of Phidias and 
Praxiteles. . . . 

I would now add the adjective synthetic. And I would say that by 
this I mean to indicate an art not objectively veridical, but one that 
in its representation of truth also reveals the lyric spirit and independent 
style of the author; an art that does not abstract from visible reality, 
perceptible to the senses, as do all the decadent schools of an idealistic 
romantic origin from cubism to Dadaism via neo-classicism and futur- 
ism, but takes its inspiration and its elements from an observation and 
study of living, present, working reality, elaborating them until they 
reconstitute a higher synthesis, a creation evoking the poetry of nature, 
the variety and beauty of the beings and things among which we 
live. . . . 

Thus there remains nothing for us to do but to wait and see how the 
Duce^s words are put into practice. I do not conceal that this waiting 
is in my case at least combined with a certain perplexity and apprehen- 
sion. Has it not been proved perhaps that many of the best ideas ex- 
pressed by our Head have found stumbling-blocks and have been de- 
formed in every way as soon as they descended among those who had 
to translate them into practical reality and make them bear fruit? 

Let us hope, however, that in this case it will be different.” (Ardengo 
Soffici: In Critica Fascista, October 15, 1926, pp. 383-385.) 

No. 34. Fascist Futurist Art 

(This article, which Marinetti contributed to the Critica Fascista 
series on fascist art, shows his defiance toward the idealist school of art 
and indicates the chief rivalries within the fascist camp.) 

In the question of fascist art, it is first of all necessary to 
decide who has and who has not the right to talk. 

Benedetto Croce and the Crocians have no right to talk. Benedetto 
Croce was the creator of a disastrous type of mind, skeptical, pessimistic, 
denying all the spiritual values of our race and subjecting them to an 
idiotic idolatry of German thought. Benedetto Croce, far from having 
any intuition of the formidable power of development that was ferment- 



FASCIST FUTURIST ART 


361 

ing In Italian youth twenty years ago, foresaw nothing, hoped for 
nothing, and tried to belittle and castrate everything. The daring and 
innovating were denied by him In the name of the pretended divinity of 
history. Naturally his merits as a historian leave us very cold. . . . 
Benedetto Croce was a Germanophile neutralist, and dedicated some 
pompous useless articles to Goethe while we were fighting on the front 
against the Germans. He was, and remains, the discordant philosopher, 
without smell, heavy with books and poor in ideas. 

The Vocians, almost all sons or disciples of Croce, have no right to 
intervene in the question of fascist art. Like their teacher they were the 
implacable defamers of the creative temper of our race. Implacably 
they yelped against us futurists when we, first of all, asserted Italian lit- 
erary, artistic and political pride In the theatres and squares, confronting 
jeers and mockery and arguing with blows and beatings. The Vocians, 
in ecstasy before all foreign spiritual values, dreamed of augmenting the 
cultural labor and cultured class of our Italy, which all along has had 
marvellous creative forces to sustain and glorify. They were the critics 
and pedantic hurlers and pharmacists of thought, worshippers of blend- 
ing colors and of idiotic semi-expressions. They hated the impetuous 
burst of Italian youth, they showed their disapproval of our first holy 
futurist fights, they vilified the army and our first colonial attempts. 
One must not confuse the cultural neutralist, pacifistic, friend-of-the- 
forelgn Voce, with Ldcerba, inflated with Italian futurism, in which 
Papini displayed his improvised and ephemeral futurist soul, and 
Ardengo Soffici, the author of a magnificent eulogy of futurism, carried 
on some genuine Italian futurism. 

The present anti-fascists have almost all of them (for example, 
Salvemini) the typical Crocian and Vocian type of mind. Who then 
has a right to talk in the discussion of fascist art? 

First of all, the futurists. 

The futurists, eighteen years ago, foresaw all this. Into a soft Italy, 
undone by socialism and foreign culturalism, they Injected a renewing 
Italian pride by their fights and beatings. They were the first inter- 
ventionists and were imprisoned for their love of the great renewing 
War. They fought the War with terrible Italian pride , . . and were 
the first to cooperate with Mussolini in public squares, in gatherings 
and in prison in founding the fasci di combattimento. 

Between battles they were able with their futurist elasticity to carry 
on the great literary revolution of free words. They opened Infinite 
vistas for the theatre by their destruction of all technique, by the concept 
of surprise synthesis, cafe-concert, moving picture art, and created the 
esthetics of the machine and plastic dynamism, which has generated 
the new schools of painting. They renovated the art staging and scenery 
throughout the world. . . . They are modifying all the cities of the 
world by the architecture invented by S. Elia. 

Futurist art is thoroughly Italian, for it is virile, warlike, merry. 



ON FASCIST ART 


362 

optimistic, dynamic, synthetic, simultaneous and colorful. . . * This 
is fascist futurist art in perfect harmony with the typically improvising 
and anti-cultural, anti-Crocian, anti-Vocian, temperament of Benito 
Mussolini.’^ (In Critica FascistUy January i, 1927, p. 3.) 


No. 35. On Fascist Art 

(The following is taken from the editorial in Critica Fascista which 
gave the “ results "" of its series of articles on the subject, written by 
various prominent fascist intellectuals. The comments on the Academy 
are prompted by the recent formation of an Italian Academy pre- 
sumably closely modelled on French lines, an d^ hence criticized as apt 
to be a conventional rather than a fascist institution.) 

. In the fascist state, in the state, mind you, the problem of art 
can be solved by leaving art to free creation. . . . What can the state 
do for art? . . . Agnosticism in these matters is a democratic-liberal 
product and belongs to that thoroughly superseded social doctrine that 
left everything to individual decision. . . . 

First of all an immediate, necessary and very useful kind of public 
intervention should be exercised by the various fascist organizations, the 
Party and the syndicates. All the headquarters of jasciy of municipal 
governments, of associations and syndicates, are loaded with horrible 
pseudo-artistic objects, and similarly all the cultural expositions of the 
above-named bodies in their celebrations and propaganda are thick 
with the display of materials that indicate the most undisguised bad 
taste. Incredible pictorial decorations on the walls, horrible busts of 
colored plaster on every side, emblems and standards in glaring 
colors, lictors^ rods in gilded stucco that look like bundjes of firewood, 
chromo-lithographs of the Duce in impossible postures. . . . Enough 
of all this. We need to clean up our cities of these circulating monuments 
to bad taste, and to disqualify all those visiting-card publishers and 
all the false artists who sold or donated them, in either case exploiting 
the inexperience of the local directors. 

This much said, we regard the intervention of the state In favor of art 
as something to be carried on very thoughtfully and prudently. First 
of all the economic interests of artists must be looked after, be they 
good or mediocre artists, and this the state is doing through the artists’ 
syndicates. . . . 

Today the bohemian artist of the good and bad old anarchic times no 
longer exists, living by his own moral law contrary to the ordinary laws. 
Every period of civilization has an art corresponding to its own moral 
substance, and fascist civilization will not admit that artists form a 
group morally separate from the complex of national society. . . . They 
need the state, now that the times of patronage and bohemlanism are 
gone forever, for an artistic, moral and spiritual guidance, which should 



ON FASCIST ART 


363 

be exercised, especially in regard to the choicest artists, on the basis 
of precise and particular judgments, a very difficult thing in practice. 
And here is where the necessity is seen for creating an adequate body for 
this task, within the Italian Academy. . . . 

The Italian Academy must be an anti-academy; must be anti-parasitic, 
anti-static, dynamic, operating, creative. In short, we believe that the 
Italian Academy must be the organ of the fascist revolution in the 
field of art. . . . This must be understood in the sense of a prudent, 
spiritual and material conservation of the artistic patrimony of our race. 
. . . Every form of Intellectual and artistic expression should be favored 
which, in the judgment of the Academy, is in perfect harmony with the 
historic and immutable Italian temper and capable of reporting and as- 
serting this temper by a style which is its own, distinct from that of 
every other people. . . . 

In short the Italian Academy should be a kind of Ministry of Italian 
Culture. ... Of course the members of the Academy will be chosen 
among the live, illustrious, Italian and fascist artistic personalities of the 
nation. . . . The spiritual empire of fascist Italy should be founded 
by artists who are clearly and traditionally Italian, that is fascist. The 
Duce announced some time ago his intention of making Rome a great 
modern metropolis, not unworthy of her formidable traditions. Now 
what state body could better indicate the way to be followed to achieve 
this aim than the Italian Academy? - . . The Italian Academy, the 
ideal, artistic and intellectual synthesis of fascist Italy, would impress 
its Italian character. Its unity of style. Its traditional and modern im- 
print, on everything that the new Italy is endeavoring to create. . . 
(In Critica Fascista, February 15, 1927, pp. 61-64.) 




BIBLIOGRAPHY 


This bibliography is by no means complete. A fairly comprehensive 
one is : Guida Bibliografica di Cultura Fascista, published by Berlutti and 
listed below, (v. Bihliografia Fascista.) The books and journals given 
below deal for the most part with the general political history and theory 
of fascism, not with technical details. Occasional comments are made 
to indicate the general point of view or subject-matter of a book, or to 
identify the author. 


1. Books and Articles 

Acerbo, Giacomo: II Fascismo nel primo anno di Governo. 40 pp. Ber- 
lutti. Rome. 1923. (By a prominent agriculturalist and Fascist poli- 
tician.) 

Acito, Alfredo: Corporazioni e sindacati nella storia^ nello Stato, e net 
partiti poHtici 232 pp. Trasi. Milan. 1925. 

Agnesi, Giovanni: I nostri orientamenti, 43 pp. Cazzamalli. Crema. 

1921. (A statement of the 1921 platform.) 

Alazard, Jean: Communisme et Fascisme en Italie. 118 pp. Bossard. 

Paris. 1922. (Slight, but impartially informed.) 

Ambrosian!, G.: Sindacati, Consigli Tecnici e Parlamento politico. 167 
pp. A. R. E. Rome. 1925. 

Ambrosini, Vittorio: La Battaglia per Lo Stato Sindacale. 156 pp. 
A. R. E. Rome. 1925. 

Amendola, Giovanni: Una Battaglia liber ale. 233 pp. Gobetti. Turin. 

1924- 

; La democrazia dopo U 6 aprile IQ24. 169 pp. Corbaccio. Milan. 

1924. 

Antologia della Nuova Italia. 342 pp. Voghera. Rome. 1923. 
Ardali, Paolo: Pio XI e Mussolini. 35 pp. Paladino. Mantua. 1926. 
(Amusing pamphlets — propaganda against the popularists.) 

: San Francesco e Mussolini. 41 pp. Paladino. Mantua. 1926. 

Arias, Gino: La Riforma dello Stato. Chapter in Mussolini e U suo 
Fascismo. Edited by Curt Gutkind. Monnier. Florence. 1927. (A 
good discussion of constitutional reform by a prominent authority ~ 
member of Commission of “ Solons.”) 

Arnaldi, Ulrico: Rossi-Bianchi e tricolori. 194 pp. Vallecchi. Florence. 
1920. (For early Florentine history.) 



366 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Baciocchi De Peon, M. : Manuale del Fascista, 74 PP* Bemporad. 
Florence. 1923* (“Spiritual regulations of discipline.”) 

Balabanoff, Angelica: in La France de Nice et du Sud-Est. February 
25, 1927. (A character sketch of Mussolini by a Russian communist 
associate of his during his youthful exile in Switzerland and his revo- 
lutionary journalism before the war.) 

Balbo, Italo: Lavoro e milizia per la nuova Italia.^ 48 pp. Berlutti. 
Rome. 1923. (By the former head of the Militia.) 

Baldesi, Gino; Dalle antiche corporazioni al moderno sindacalismo. 62 
pp. Alpes. Milan. 1924. (By an ex-director of the C. G. L., now 
favorably inclined toward fascism.) 

: S'mdacalismo fascista. 48 pp. Botta. Turin. 1924* 

Banchelli, Umberto: Le Memorie di un fascista, IQIQ-IQ22. 230 pp. 
Florence. 1922. (Very entertaining account of the life of a prom- 
inent squadrist and associate of Durnini, expelled from the Party in 
1922 for misbehavior.) 

Barbarie rosse, Le, Edited by the Fascia Jtaliano di Combattimento, 
no pp. Rome. 1921. (Chronological account by fascisti of deeds 
of socialists since 1919*) 

Barnes, J. S.: The Universal Aspects of Fascism. 247 pp. Williams 
and Norgate. London. 1928. 

Bastianini, Giuseppe: Rivoluzione. 130 pp. Berlutti. Rome. I 9 ^^ 3 - 
(By a prominent fascist organizer now head of the fasci in foreign 
countries.) 

Bergamo, G., with G. De Falco and G. Zibordi: II fascismo visto da re- 
pubblicani e socialisti, 130 pp. Cappelli. Bologna. 1922. (Lively 
polemics.) 

Bernard, Ludwig: Das System Mussolini, 143 pp. Berlin. 1924* 

Bibliografia Fascista. Berlutti. Rome. (Berlutti Publishing House 
has organized the Librerta del Littorio and is headquarters for fascist 
books. It gets out a periodical by the above title and also a volume, 
Guida Bibliografica di Cultura Fascista, The first edition of the vol- 
ume is 1925; the second and greatly enlarged edition is 1927.) 

Bodrero, Emilio: Presagi d'Impero, Alpes. Milan. 1925. (By the 
Under-secretary of Public Instruction, an ex-professor.) 

: Vittorie dottrinali del Fascismo, 38 pp. Bemporad. Florence. 

1927. (A popular and exceedingly superficial exposition of fascist 
doctrine.) 

Boffi, Ferruccio E.: La Riforma Scolastica e VUfficio Stampa del Gabi- 
netto Gentile. 182 pp. Sandron. Rome. 1925. 

Bolzon, Piero: Le verghe e la scure, Vol. I. Roveto Ardente. 226 pp. 
La Voce. Florence. 1923. (Futurist-fascist literature. He is now 
an Under-secretary in the government.) 

; Le verghe e la scute. Vol. II. II Dado Gettato. 270 pp. La Voce. 

Florence. 1923. 

Bolitho, William: Italy under Mussolini, 129 pp. Macmillan. New 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 


367 

York. 1926. (Collection of anti-fascist articles published in the New 
York World; lively account of fascist scandals, but now quite out of 
date.) 

Bonomi, Ivanoe: From Socialism to Fascism, A Study of Contempo- 
rary Italy, 147 pp. Martin Hopkinson. London. 1924. (By an 
ex-Prime Minister. Good survey of origins of fascism.) 

Bottai, Giuseppe: II Fascismo e Vltalia Nuova, 74 pp. Berluttl. 
Rome, 1923. (Formerly a futurist, now editor of Critica Fascista, 
and Minister of Corporations. See his numerous articles in Critica 
Fascista, especially on the Party, the bureaucracy and the syndicates, 
and in II Diritto del Lavoro^ on his activities as Minister of Cor- 
porations.) 

Brescia: Quaderno sulVattivita sindacale di Brescia, Apollonio. 
Brescia. 1926. (An account of early fascist syndicalism in Brescia, 
one of the centers of violence, the fascia of Augusto Turati, now Secre- 
tary of the Party.) 

Cambo, Francesco: II Fascismo Italiano, Translated from the Spanish 
by G. Giardini. 177 pp. Alpes, Milan. 1925. (Good account of 
the state of fascism immediately after the Matteotti crisis. Also a 
good critique of parliamentarianism. By a Spanish reporter.) 

Campogrande, Valerio: Le recenti leggi fasciste. Lattes. Turin. 1926. 

Cantalupo, Roberto: Fatti Europei e politica Italiana (ig22-ig24), 
196 pp. Imperia. Milan. 1924. (By a prominent nationalist writer. 
See also his numerous articles in Gerarchia and Politica,) 

: La classe dirigente. Alpes. Milan. 1926, 

Carli, Mario: Fascismo Intransigente, 271 pp. Bemporad. Florence. 
1926. (A collection of polemics by one of the editors of Vlmpero, He 
is one of the most prominent of the early futurists in fascism and one 
of the most violent of the Intransigents. He is a continual source of 
embarrassment to more sober fascisti,) 

La Carta del Lavoro, Edited by Giuseppe Bottal. Ministero delle 
Corporazione, Rome. 1927. (Contains text of Labor Charter and 
some related documents and Is being translated into several 
languages.) 

Carta del Lavoro, Series of articles in Gerarchia, May 1927. (The 
papers and journals are full of comments on the Labor Charter during 
the weeks following April 21, 1927.) 

Casalini, Armando: Scritti Sindacali, 31 pp. Imperia. Genoa. 1925. 
(A pamphlet by the fascist syndicalist who was murdered in Sep- 
tember 1924 to avenge the death of Matteotti. He had a number of 
articles in Rossoni’s magazine. La Stirpe,) 

Chiurco, Giorgio Alberto: Fascismo Senese: martiriolo^o toscano ddla 
nascita alia Gloria di Roma, 253 pp. Combattenti, Siena. 1923, 
(A typical martyrology.) 

Christo, Homem: Mussolini, Bdtisseur A* Avenir, Harangue aux 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 


368 

Foules Latines, 329 pp. Editions Fast. Paris. 1923. (A harangue 
by an enthusiast for a Latin confederation under fascist he- 
gemony.) 

Church and State. Series of discussions between Arnaldo Mussolini in 
II Popolo d^Italia, and the Osservatore Romano. September to 
October 1926. 

Ciarlantini, Franco: Imperialismo spirituale. 192 pp. Alpes, Milan. 
1925. (An outline of the fascist budget for art and the advertising of 
Italian art abroad.) 

Ciccotti, Ettore: Cronache quadriennali di politica Italiana ed estera 
(igjQ-ig2s). 2 vols. 898 pp. Unitas. Milan. 1924. (By a 
socialist.) 

:Il Fascismo e le sue fasL 456 pp. Unitas. Milan. 1925. 

Cippico, Antonio: Italy, the Central Problem of the Mediterranean. 
loi pp. Yale Univ. Press. New Haven. 1926. (Typical general 
statement of fascism by a fascist.) 

Cipriani-Avollo, Giacomo: Da una Rivoluzione ad un colpo di Stato. 

86 pp. Polemica Fascista. Rome. 1924. (A leading “ revisionist.’^ 
Codignola, Ernesto: II prohlema delVeducazione nazionale in Italia. 
Florence. 1926. (By a leader in the educational reform.) 

: La Riforma Scolastica. Chapter in Mussolini e il suo Fascismo. 

Edited by Curt Gutkind. Monnier. Florence. 1927. (A good 
outline of the reform.) 

Contri^ Gioacchino: See his articles in Gerarchia and Critica Fascista. 

(Prominent among the younger polemic writers and theorists.) 
Coppola, Francesco: La Rivoluzione Fascista e la politica mondiale. 
96 pp. Politica. Rome. 1924. (He is the most prominent and 
voluminous of the nationalist writers, the mouthpiece of Federzoni; 
also an ex-delegate to the League of Nations, and its bitter opponent.) 
; See his articles in Politica. 

CoimdlniyExinco: II Nazionalismo Italiano. 275 pp. Treves. Milan. 
1914, (The leader of the nationalists. Numerous articles In VIdea 
Nazionale, Tribiina, Gerarchia, Politica, Rassegna Italiana.) 

: Vunita e la potenza delle Nazioni. 344 pp. Vallecchi. Florence. 

1922. Second edition 1926. 

: Fascismo Vita dLtalia. 24 pp. Vallecchi. Florence. 1925. 

Costamagna, Carlo: Manuale di dirkto corporativo italiano. Turin. 
1927. (A leading authority on corporationism, member of the Com- 
mission of “ Solons.” See also his articles in Lo Stato Corporativo.) 

: Sistemazione del diritto sindacale nel quadro del diritto moderno. 

Vol. L No. I. of II Diritto del Lavoro. Rome. 1927. 

Croce, Idenedttto: Postille della Guerra. Laterza. Bari. 1921. (Nu- 
merous critical and polemic articles in his La Critica. He is supposed 
to be a fascist in spite of himself.”) 

: On the Conduct of Life. (A translation of a collection of postille. 

Not directly related to fascism.) 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 369 

: Elementi di Politica, 117 pp. Laterza. Bari. 1925. (Has no 

relation to fascism. Hence the offense it gave !) 

Cnrcio, Carlo: U esperienza liberate del Fascismo. 163 pp. Morano. 
Naples. 1924. (By a southern idealist; links up fascism with the 
‘‘historic right wing” of the risorgimento.) 

De Ambris, Alceste: I postulati dei Fasci di Combattimento: Vespro- 
priazione parziale. Bergamasca. Bergamo. 1919. (Prominent syn- 
dicalist and follower of d’Annunzio, who deserted fascism and joined 
the opposition.) 

: devolution du fascisme. Paris. 1923. 

De Falco, Giuseppe: See G. Bergamo. 

Dtlc.Toix^Cd.rlo'iUnuomo eunpopolo. Vallecchi. Florence. 1928. (A 
popular veteran and orator.) 

Della Torre, Edoardo: II concetto sindacalista dello Stato, 317 pp. 
Vallecchi. Florence. 1925. (A prominent fascist railroad syndicalist 
and politician.) 

Del Vecchio, Giorgio: Le ragioni morali della nostra guerra. 82 pp. Im- 
peria. Milan. 1923. (Rector of the University of Rome. A con- 
servative fascist.) 

: La Giustizia, in Rivista Internazionale di FUosofia del Diritto. 

1926. III. 

de Marsanich, A. : See his articles in Gerarchia, Popolo d'ltalia, Roma 
Fascista, Critica Fascista, (Prominent among the young polemic 
writers.) 

de Montemayor, Giulio: La Politica del Vico e quella del Croce. 31 pp. 
Alberti. Rome. 1926. (Ex-syndicalist now Professor at the Uni- 
versity of Florence. A dilletante on fascist political philosophy.) 

Deputato al Parlamento, Un: II fascismo. Milan. 1922. (An excel- 
lent brief, critical analysis of early fascism.) 

De Stefani, Alberto: Dfjcom. 275 pp. Imperia. Milan. 1923. (Con- 
tains the famous budget speeches of the first fascist Minister of Fi- 
nance, and also many of his polemics during the early days of fascism 
in Venetia.) 

: Documenti sulla condizione finanziaria ed economica delV Italia. 

545 pp. Libreria dello Stato. Rome. 1923. 

: Decadenza demografica e decadenza economka. 127 pp. La 

Voce. Florence. 1923. 

: La rkostruzione economka e finanziaria delFItalia. 59 pp. Li- 
breria dello Stato. Rome. 1924. (Out of print.) 

; Vie Maestre: Commenti sulla finanza del ig26. Treves. Rome. 

1927- 

: Le Riforme Finanziarie. Chapter In Mussolini e U suo Fascismo. 

Edited by Curt Gutkind. Monnier. Florence. 1927. 

Deutsch, Julius: Antifaschismus. 118 pp. Vienna, 1926. (Propa- 
ganda of Austrian socialists.) 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 


370 

Di GiacomOj Giacomo: UOrganizzazione sindacale dei lavoratori Intel- 
lettuali, 140 pp. Imperia. Milan. 1924. 

Disciplina giuridica dei rapporti collettivi del lavoro. 277 pp. Giuris- 
prudenza del Lavoro. Milan. 1926. (A good collection of docu- 
ments and discussions relating to the syndical reform, especially the 
Law of April 3, 1926.) 

Einaudi, Luigi: Le lotte del lavoro^ 276 pp. Gobetti. Turin. 1924. 
(By an eminent non-fascist economist.) 

Ellenbogen, Wilhelm: Fascismus — Das Faschistische Italien. Vienna. 

^923- 

Ercole, Francesco: II carattere morale del nazionalismo. In Political 
Vol. XL 1922. pp. 193-218. (He is a philosopher who is trying to 
gi\^e nationalism and fascism an idealistic basis.) 

: La profezia del Fascismo. In Politica. XVIII. 1924. Rome. 

(reprinted in Pagine Fasciste.) 

: La Politic a di Machiavelli. 1925. 

: Le Origini deWItalia Fascista. Alberti. Rome. 1927. 

Evola, J.: Imperialismo Pagano. (II Fascismo dinanzi al pericolo euro- 
cristiano.) 160 pp. 1928. Rome. (A NIetzschean version of 
fascism.) 

FabbrI, Luigi: La contrarivoluzione preventiva, 100 pp. Cappelli. 
Bologna. 1922, (From a futurist and anarchist point of view.) 

Farinacci, Roberto: Un Periodo Aureo del Partito Nazionale Fascista. 
417 pp. Campitelli. FoIIgno. 1927. (Collection of his speeches 
while he was Secretary of the Party, ending with his defense of Dumini 
at the trial for the murder of Matteotti. The best expression of so- 
called intransigent fascism.) 

Fasci Italiani di Combattimento: Orientamenti teorici, Postulati practicL 
Milan. 1919. 

Fascism: A special number of the Survey Graphic, March 1927, con- 
taining articles on various aspects of fascism by W. Y. Elliott, A. 
Fratelli, Silvio d’Amico, Mario Labroca, C. E. Oppo, Arnaldo Musso- 
lini, G. Prezzolini, Edmondo RossonI, 0 . Zuccarini. 

Fascismo. Avanti. Milan. 1922. (Inquiry by socialists into fascist 
deeds.) 

The Fascist State, by a Special Correspondent of London Times, Aug. 
16, 17, 18, 1927. (A good statement of recent developments in the 
syndicates and corporations.) 

Federzoni, Luigi: Ultalia didomani. Ultaliana. Rome. 1917. (Min- 
ister of Colonies, ex-Minister of the Interior, ex-Vice President of the 
Chamber of Deputies, chief of the nationalist politicians.) 

: Presagi alia Nazione. 342 pp. Imperia. Milan. 1924. (A col- 
lection of his addresses.) 

: Paradossi di ieri. Mondadori. Milan. 1925. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 


371 

: Venti mesi di azione coloniale, 225 pp. Mondadori. Milan. 

1926. 

Ferrero, Guglielmo: Da Flume a Roma, {Storia dt Quattro Ann% jgig- 
ig23,) 141 pp. Athena. Milan. 1923. Translated into English 

as Four Years of Fascism, by E, Dickes. London. 1924. (Analysis, 
by a distinguished historian, of the political factors in the rise of 
fascism. He is a liberal and an outstanding figure in the opposition.) 

: La democrazia in Italia, 137 pp. Rassegna Internazionale, 

Ferri, C. E.: La Societa delle Nazioni e V Italia, 126 pp. Alpes. Milan. 

1924- 

I Festeggiamenti e i problemi del rinnovamento Fas cist a. Civiltd Cat- 
tolica, Rome. 1923. 

Filareti, Generale: In Margine del Fascismo, 421 pp. Unitas. Milan. 
1925. {Nom de plume of a militant antl-democrat who had hopes in 
fascism but later was disillusioned. Interesting comments on politics 
in the south.) 

Forges-Davanzati, Roberto: Fascismo e Cultura, 41 pp, Bemporad. 
Florence. 1926. (Typical harangues by a leading nationalist. See 
also his editorials in the Tribuna,) 

Formlggini, Angelo Fortunate: La Ficozza FUosofica del Fascismo, 
Rome. 1923. (A humorous treatment of fascist ideology.) 

Fortunate, Giustino: Questions meridionale e riforma tributaria, 93 pp. 
La Voce, Rome. 1920. (This senator, now too old to be a fascist, 
has been famous for years for this subject. He regards the north 
as more or less of an imposition on the south.) 

Foscanelli, Umberto: D'Annunzio e il Fascismo con lo Statuto della 
Reggenza del Carnaro, iS9pp. Audace. Milan. 1923. 

Freddi, Luigi: Fascismo: La sua storia — La sua dottrina — La sua or- 
ganizzazione, 67 pp. Bemporad. Florence. 1923. (A brief state- 
ment by one of the pioneer politicians. Not a critical or historical ac- 
count, but has some useful facts about the organization of fascism 
in 1923.) 

Gangemi, Lello: La Politica Economica del Fascismo, Libreria dello 
Stato, Ministero di Finanza, Rome. 1926. (An official publication 
on fascist economic policy.) 

GB-ydB-jV,: La Germania contro la Francia, Bemporad. Florence. (A 
statement of changed relations between Germany, France, and Italy 
since the War. Regular contributor to Gerarchial) 

Gentile, Giovanni: Educazione e scuola laica, Vallecchi. Florence. 
1921. (Leader of the fascist philosophical idealists, chief sponsor of 
the educational reform, head of Fascist Institute of Culture, and one 
of fascism’s more critical minds. He is fascism’s official preacher.) 

: II Fascismo al Governo della scuola, 328 pp. Sandron, Pa- 
lermo. 1924. 

: La nuova scuola media. Vallecchi. Florence, 1925* 



372 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


: Che cosa e il fascismo. 262 pp. Vallecchi. Florence. 1925. 

(A collection of his chief addresses.) 

: / Fondamenti della Filosofia del DifittOj ed altri scritti. Alberti. 

Rome. 1926. 

: Guerra e Fede, 350 pp. Alberti. Rome. Second edition 1926. 

Giantnrco, Mario: La Legislazione Sindacale Fascista e la Rijorma 
Costituzionale. 190 pp. Imperia. Genoa. 1926. (One of the most 
extreme of the fascist syndicalists.) 

Gigante, M. : Commento alia legge 3 aprile 1926. 162 pp. Mantegazza. 
Rome. 1926. 

Glni, Corrado: The Scientific Basis of Fascism. In The Political Science 
Quarterly, March 1927, pp. 99-115. (Member of the Commission of 
“ Solons/’ now head of the Statistical Bureau. A fascist, but has his 
own theories.) 

Giuliano, Balbino: Uesperienza politica delV Italia. 327 pp. Vallecchi. 
Florence. 1924. 

: La politica scolastica del Qoverno Nazionale, lyi pp. Alpes. 

Milan. 1924. ( A good defense of the Gentile school reform, contain-* 
ing typical bits of fascist philosophy.) 

: La Formazione Storica del Fascismo. Chapter In Mussolini e il 

suo Fascismo. Edited by Curt Gutkind. Monnier. Florence. 1927. 
Gobetti, Piero: La rivoluzione liber ale. 162 pp. Cappelli. Bologna. 

1924; _ 

Gorgolini, Pietro: Il fascismo nella vita italiana. 258 pp. Silvestrelli e 
Cappelletto. Turin. 1922. (A long rhapsody; but comparatively 
it is a sober account of the development of fascism. At least it Is one 
of the first. The author is a prominent fascist so-called intellectual, 
journalist, and organizer of fascist intellectuals.) 

: La Rivoluzione Fascista. 144 pp. Silvestrelli e Cappelletto. 

Turin. 1923. (Contains a number of documents and addresses con- 
nected with the March on Rome. Also rhapsodical.) 

: Michele Bianchi. Profilo. 30 pp. Imperia. Milan. 1923. 

Grandi, Dino: Le Origini e la missione del Fascismo. In II Fascismo, 
with Adolfo Zerboglio and R. Mondolfo, pp. 47-71. Cappelli. 
Bologna. 1922. (Grandi is a democratic nationalist who came into 
prominence by this speech delivered at the Rome Congress of 1921. 
He is now, under Mussolini, Minister of Foreign Affairs.) 

Grandi Discorst Elettorali del 1924. Benito Mussolini, De Stefani, 
Federzoni, Oviglio, Di Giorgio, Gentile, Corbino, Carnazza, E. Torre, 
Acerbo, Finzi, Serpieri, Salandra, A. Torre, Delcroix, Paratore, 
Benelli, Bottai, BennL 362 pp. Imperia. Milan. 1924. (A good 
collection of election speeches for the 1924 elections, valuable as 
samples of the various points of view and conceptions of fascism cur- 
rent in that year.) 

Hamburger, Ernest: Aus Mussolinis Reich. 47 pp. Breslau. 1924. 
V. Hartlieb, Wladimir: Italien, Alte und neue Werte. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 


1923. 


373 

(A delightful 


Hazard, Paul: Vltalie vivante. Paris, 
description.) 

U Italia di Vittorio Emanuele III, igoo—iQ2$, Special number of Ras- 
segna Italiana, December 1925. (Contributions by Mussolini and 
the other Cabinet Members, as well as by a number of directors of 
important institutions, giving brief summary of developments in 
various departments during the first quarter of the century.) 

Italy^s Great War and her National Aspirations . Editors: Nelson Gay, 
Tomaso Sillanl, and Armando Hodnig. With chapters by Mario 
Alberti, Carlo Corsi, Armando Hodnig, Tomaso Sillani, Attilio 
Tamaro, Ettore Tolomei, Alfieri e Lacroix. Milan. 1917. 

Jannelli, Guglielmo: Lto crisi del fascismo in Sicilia, 50 pp. Balza 
Futurista. Messina. 1924. 

Kaminski, Hanza-Erich: Der Fascismus in Jtalien. 140 pp. Berlin. 

1925- 

Labriola, Arturo: Le due Politiche — Fascismo e riformismo, 318 pp. 
Morano, Naples. 1924. (A veteran syndicalist, former head of 
C. G. L. and a leading opponent of fascism.) 

: II Socialismo contemporaneo, Lineamenti storici. Con ap- 

pendice: La dittatura del proletariato ed i problemi economici del 
socialismo, 382 pp. Morano. Naples. 1922. 

: Polemica antifascista, 219 pp. Ceccoli. Naples. 1925. 

: Voltaire, e la fHosofia della liberazione, 332 pp. Morano. 

Naples. 1926. (A plea for individualism and liberty.) 

Lanzillo, Agostino: Le rivoluzioni del dopo guerra. 258 pp. Solco. 
Citta di Castello. 1922. (A prominent syndicalist scholar, first 
Sorelian, then fascist, member of the Commission of “ Solons,” im- 
portant also as a Party politician.) 

La Legge Sindacale, 94 pp. Moderna Scuola, Rome. 1926. (There 
are now numerous editions of this new labor Law of April 3, 1926.) 

Licitra, Carmelo: La nuova scuola del popolo Italiano, 173 pp. Al- 
berti. Rome. 1924. (A voluminous young writer of the Gentile 
school.) 

: Dal liberalismo al fascismo, 162 pp. Alberti. Rome. 19 ^ 5 - 

: La Storigrafia Idealistica. 180 pp. Alberti. Rome. 1926. 

Lumbroso, Giacomo: La crisi del fascismo. 162 pp. Vallecchi. Flor- 
ence. 1925. (An excellent, critical account of the dissidence in fas- 
cism, 1923-4*) 

L. W.: Fascism: its History and Significance, London. 1924- 

McCormick, Anne O^Hare: Behirtd Fascism stands a Philosopher. In 
New York Times Magazine. September 26, 1926. Several other 
articles on Fascism in the New York Times, 



374 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

McGuire, C. E.: Italy's hiternational Economk Poskio'n. Macmillan. 
1926, 

Magni, Francesco: I diritti di libertd nel regime fascista, Cursi. Pisa, 
1926. (Develops the irreconcilability between absolute liberty 
and political authority.) 

Magri, F.: La crin industriale e il controllo operaio. 327 pp. Arti 
Grafiche. Varese. 1922. 

Magrone, Luigi: La malavita politico-banc aria contro lo Stato Fascista, 
228 pp. UUniverselle, Rome, 1923. 

Malaparte, Curzio: See Suckert, Curzio. 

Manijesti del N azio7ialismo italiano, 314 pp. Milan. 1919. 

Mannhardt, Johann Wilhelm: Der Faschismus. 41 1 pp. C. H. Beck. 
Munich. 1925. (The most thoroughgoing history of fascism from 
1919 to 1924, which has so far appeared in any language. Though it 
is wordy and cluttered up with pedantry, it is full of facts and refer- 
ences. A valuable source book.) 

Maraviglia, Maurizio: II Nuova valor e spirituale ed internazionale del 
ritalia, 31 pp. P, N, F, Rome. 1924. (A sample of nationalist 
philosophy.) 

Marcuzzi, Antonio: Letteratura Fascista, 106 pp. Botta. Turin. 

Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso: Futurismo e Fascisjno. 249 pp. Campi- 
telli. Foligno. 1924. (A collection of speeches and other forms of 
futurist violence. Gives an excellent account of the futuristic wing 
of fascism.) 

: L^Arte Fascista Futurista, In Critica Fascista, January i, 1927, 

: Verso un Teatro Anti-psicologico, In ll igiQ, August 1926, p. 44. 

Marsich, Pietro: La posizione teorica e pratica del fascismo di f route 
alio Stato, In Popolo d'ltalia, January 25, 1921. (An important 
document by an early fascist leader of Venetia, reflecting a point of 
view which did not prevail after the formation of the party.) 

Massuero, F. N.: Ombre e hid di due co7itinenti, Alpes. Milan. 1926. 
(On colonial expansion.) 

Matteotti, Giacomo: Ufi anno di dominazione fascista — Memorie, fatti, 
e documenti. 91 pp. Rome. 1923. (The book that led to his 
murder.) 

: The fascist exposed: a year of fascist domination. Translated by 

E. W. Bickes. London. 1924. (Also translated into French and 
German) . 

Miceli, Giuseppe: His Rassegna Corporativa, a department in Critica 
Fascista, gives a good account of current developments in the syndi- 
calist field. 

Miceli, Vincenzo: II Partito Fascista e la sua* funzione in Italia, 127 pp. 
Imperia. Milan. 1924. 

Michels, Robert: Der Aufstieg des Faschismus in Italien, Tubingen. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 


375 

1924. (For many years professor at Turin, now professor at the 
University of Perugia. An authority on Italian socialism.) 

: Sozialismus in Italie^i. 419 pp. Meyer and Jessen. Munich. 

1925- 

: Sozialismus und Fascismus in Italien. 338 pp. Meyer and Jessen. 

Munich. 1925. (Contains an excellent account of the factory occu- 
pation at Turin, and many observations on fascism by a sympathetic, 
but critical scientist.) 

: Discorso sulla legislazione operaia, Frankfurt. 1925. 

: Storia critica del movimento socialista italiano. 460 pp. La Voce. 

Florence. 1926. 

: Cor so di Sociologia Politica. Milan. 1926. (Chapter on 

Fascism.) 

Missiroli, Mario: II fascismo e la crisi italiana. 60 pp. Cappelli. 
Bologna. 1921. (One of the best and most penetrating of early 
essays.) 

: Una battaglia perduta. 381 pp. Corbaccio. Milan. 1924. 

Misuri, Alfredo: Rivolta Morale. 278 pp. Corbaccio. Milan. 1924. 
(A detailed account of his revolt from fascism and other Incidents in 
the dissidence movement.) 

Mondolfo, R.: Per la comprensione storica del Fascismo. Introduction 
to II Fascismo e i partiti politici, by Grand! and Zerboglio. 35 pp. 
Cappelli. Bologna. 1922. (A good critical essay.) 

Montagnari, Ernesto: I piu grandi siamo noi. 500 pp. Mondadori. 
Milan. 1924. (More rhapsody.) 

yioxiti, A. A.: Pagine reazionarie. Campitelli. Foligno. 1925. (By a 
right-wing nationalist fascist.) 

Muriello, Raffaele: Mussolini^ his Work and the new Syndical Law. 

Macniven and Wallace. Edinburgh. 1926, 

Murphy, James: Syndicalism in Italy. In The Edinburgh Review. 
1923. 

: Fascismo: Reform or Reaction. In The Atlantic Monthly. 1924. 

(High class scandal-mongering, but contains much first-hand infor- 
mation. See also his other articles in the Atlantic Monthly, the Na- 
tion, and other periodicals.) 

Mussolini, Arnaldo: Series of discussions of the Church and the State, 
between II Popolo dUtalia and the Osservatore Romano. September 
and October 1926. 

Mussolini, Benito: Le Poesie di Klopstock. In Pagine Liber e, of Lu- 
gano. Vol. 11 . No. 21. 1908. (An early essay in which he develops 
the thesis that great men, in their consciousness that they are the 
chosen champions of the people, become fanatic prophets and dog- 
matically expound the future aims and destinies of the people and 
excommunicate all who disagree. Thus they become really reaction- 
aries and forget that their power is derived from the people.) 

: II Trentino. Milan. 1912, 



376 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


: DiscorsipoliticL 203 pp. P op olo d' Italia, Milan. 1921. (Has 

been suppressed.) 

: Diuturna, 475 pp. Imperia. Milan. 1924. (A collection of his 

editorials in Popolo d'ltalia 1914-1922. Many of the most interesting 
are omitted, but on the whole it gives a fair idea of Mussolini’s vary- 
ing attitudes during these years.) 

: Fascismo e terra. In Popolo d^Italia, March 19, 1921. (Omitted 

from Diuturna.) 

: Forza e Consenso. In Gerarchiaj April 1922. (Especially im- 
portant as a theoretical attempt.) 

: I Discorsi della Rivoluzione. 106 pp. Alpes. Milan. 1923. 

; II mio diario di guerra. 236 pp. Imperia. Milan. 1923. 

: La Nuova Politic a delV Italia. . Discorsi e Dichiarazione a cura di 

Amedeo Giannini. 3 vols. 241pp. 230 pp. 510 pp. Alpes. Milan. 
1923. 1924. 1926. 

: As revealed in his political speeches translated by Baron B. di S. 

Severino. 450 pp. Dent and Sons. London. 1924, 

: Fascismo e sindacalismo. In Gerarchia, 5. Milan. 1925. 

: Discorsi del 1925- 281 pp. Alpes, Milan. 1926. 

: Discorsi del 1926. 398 pp. Alpes. Milan. 1927. 

II Pensiero Fascista. Alberti. Rome. 1927. (A collection of 

quotations.) 

Mussolini e il suo Fascismo. Edited by Curt Gutkind. Articles by Gino 
Arias, Balbino Giuliano, Ernest Codignola, Alberto De Stefani, and 
introduction by Benito Mussolini. 350 pp. Monnier. Florence. 

Mussolini e le Corporazioni. In series of pamphlets Mussolinia. Pala- 
dino. Mantua. 1927. (Contains notes by Suardo and Panunzio.) 
Muss oliniaP Series of pamphlets. Edizioni Paladina. Mantua. 

Nanni, Torquato: Bolscevismo e Fascismo al lume della critic a marx- 
ista; Benito Mussolini. 302 pp. Cappelli. Bologna. 1924. 

Naudeau, Ludovic: L^Italie fasciste ou L autre danger. 283 pp. Elam- 
marion. Paris. 1927. (Up-to-date opposition.) 

II Nazionalismo lialiano e i problemi del lavoro e della scuola. Pro- 
ceedings of the Second Nationalist Convention at Rome, with the 
political program of the Nationalist Association, framed after the 
convention by the executive committee, M. Maraviglia and A. Rocco. 
204 pp. Ultaliana. Rome. 1919. 

Nitti, Francesco Saverio: Nord e Sud. (An early work of considerable 
influence.) 

: Bolchevisme, Fascisme et Democratic. 204 pp. Progres Ci- 

vique. Paris. 1926. Translated into English and enlarged by Mar- 
garet M. Green, as Bolshevism, Fascism and Democracy. George 
Allen and Unwin. London. 1927. (By the ex-Prime Minister and 
the recognized head of the opposition.) 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 


377 


Olberg, Oda: Der Faschismus in Italien, 32 pp. Jena. 1923. 

Olivetti, A. 0 .: Bolscevismo, ComunismOy Sind ac alts mo. Caddeo. 
Milan. 1921. (A veteran exponent of Italian syndicalism now 
fascist.) 

: II sindacalismo come filosofia e come politica. Lineamenti di 

sintesi universale. 112 pp. Alpes. Milan. 1924. (Grandiose spec- 
ulation.) 

: Sindacalismo integrale. In La Stirpe, 277-279. Rome. 1924. 

Le Opposizioni parlamentari nel presente momenta politico. 87 pp. 
Corbacclo. Milan. 1924. (Defense of the Aventine opposition.) 

Orano, P. : Dal Sindacalismo rivoluzionario alio Stato sindacalista. 
29 pp. Camera. Rome. 1925. (A nationalistic syndicalist.) 

Oriani, Alfredo: La Rivolta Ideale. (First edition 1907.) New edition 
with preface by Benito Mussolini- 379 pp. Cappelll. Bologna. 
1926. (Supposed to be a forerunner of fascism.) 

Orlando, Vittorio E.: Lo Stato Sindacale^' e le condizioni attuali della 
scienza del Diritto Pubblico. In Rivista di Diritto Pubblico. Rome. 
January' 1924. (The ex-Prime Minister gives his reasons for op- 
posing the syndicalist state.) 

Pagano, Antonio: Idealismo e Nazionalismo. In Politica, August 1926, 
pp. 201-221, and December 1926, pp. 201-221. (An attempt at 
reconciling idealism and nationalism). 

Pagine Fasciste: I Fondamenti Ideali. Alberti. Rome. 1926. (Col- 
lection of important essays on fascist doctrine by Giovanni Gentile, 
Giocchino Volpe, Francesco Ercole, Giorgio Masi, and Arnaldo Vol- 
picelli. 

Pantaleoni, Maffeo: Bolscevismo italiano. Laterza. Bari. 1922. (By 
a distinguished socialist scholar.) 

: II Ministero Mussolini. In Vita Italiana, Vol. X, No. 119, 

p. 360. 

Panunzio, Sergio: II Diritto e V Autorita. U. T. E. T. Turin. 1912. 
(Left-wing fascist syndicalist. Professor at the University of 
Rome.) 

: II socialismOy la filosofia del diritto e lo Stato. Solco. Citta di 

Castella. 1921. 

: L^Auctoritas, lo stato di Diritto. Solco. Citta di Castello. 1921, 

: Diritto forza violenza. Cappelli. Bologna. 1922. 

: halo Balbo. Profilo. 50 pp. Imperia. Milan. 1923. 

: Che cos^e U fascismo. 85 pp. Alpes. Milan. 1924. 

: Filosofia e Politica del diritto. In Rivista di Diritto Pubblico ^ 

I, No. 4. 1923. 

: Stato e Sindacati. In Rivista Internazionale di Filosofia del 

diritto. III, L 1923. 

: Stato Nazionale e Sindacati. 199 pp. Imperia. Milan. 1924. 

: Lo Stato Fascista. 177 pp. Cappelli. Bologna. 1925. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 


37S 

ParetOj Vilfredo: Testamento Politico, In Giornale Eco^iomico, 1923. 
(Pareto^s writings have had a direct influence on fascism, as they have 
on all current Italian politics and social science.) 

Pasini, Achllle: Impero Unico, Teoria dello Stato Sinarchico, 266 pp. 
Berlutti. Rome. 1924. (Fancy philosophy.) 

Pellizzi, Camlllo: Problemi e realta del Fascismo, 216 pp. Vallecchi. 
Florence. 1924. (One of the cleverest and extremest of the fascist 
youths.) 

: Fascismo-Aristocrazia, 197 pp. Alpes. Milan. 1925. 

Pennachio, Alberto: The Corporative State. Italian Historical Society 
Publications, Vol. IV. New York. 1927. (Contains documents and 
charts, as well as a useful discussion.) 

Pighetti, Guido: Sindacalismo fascista, 254 pp. Imperia. Genoa. 
1924. (By a leading fascist syndicalist organizer. Contains some 
valuable historical references and comments.) 

Por, Odon: Fascism, The Labour Publishing Co. London. 1924. 
(One of the best early accounts. ) 

Preziosi, G.: Cooperativismo rosso piovra dello Stato, 322 pp. Laterza. 
Bari. 1922. 

Prezzolini, Giuseppe: La Ctdtura Italiana, 374 pp. La Voce. Flor- 
ence. 1923. 

: Le Fascisme. Translated from the Italian by Georges Bourgin. 

279 pp. Bossard. Paris. 1925. Enlarged and translated into Eng- 
lish as Fascism. 1926. (The best and most objective brief account 
of the general aspects of fascism; contains much first-hand informa- 
tion.) 

Puchetti, A. C.: II fascismo scientifico. 136 pp. Bocca. Turin, 1926. 

La Reforme Syndicate en Italie. 207 pp. Colombo. , Rome. 1926. 
(Collection and translation of documents relative to the syndical 
Law of April 3, 1926.) 

Relazioni e Proposte della Commis stone Presidenziale per lo Studio 
delle Riforme CostituzionaU, 206 pp. Libreria dello Stato, No. 324. 
Rome. 1925. (The report of the Commission of Solons.” A very 
important document in the history of recent reforms.) 

Revisionismo Fascista. jS pp. Polemic a Fascista. Rome. 1924. (A 
collection from the revisionist polemics.) 

Ricci, Umberto: Dal protezionismo al sindacalismo. Laterza. Bari. 
1926. 

La Ricostruzione fascista, Novembre iQ24-Gennaio IQ25. Edited by 
Associazione Italiana per il controllo Democratico. 220 pp. Corbac- 
cio. Milan. 1925. (Contains several important opposition speeches 
and documents.) 

Riforma parlamentare. Editorial in Critica Fascista, January 15, 1927, 
pp. 21-22. (This and a number of other articles in Critica Fascista 
are important among the pleas for the corporate parliament.) 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 


379 

Rignano, Eugenio: Democrazia e Fascismo. 129 pp. Alpes. Milan. 
1924. (A weak attempt to recall fascism to the democratic fold.) 

Rivoluzione liber ale, VoL I, No. 15. Turin. May 28, 1922. (An 
inquiry by liberals into fascist activities.) 

Rocca, Massimo: Gruppi di Competenza. 16 pp. Rinas cimento. 
Milan. 1923. (One of the fascist pioneers who turned dissident in 
1923 and was later expelled from the Party and the country. He 
organized these groups.) 

: Idee sul Fascismo, 357 pp. La Voce. Florence. 1924. (Im- 
portant contribution to fascist ideology.) 

: St oria diuna polemic a, 350 pp. Corbaccio. Milan. 1924. 

: Finanze e Fascismo. 225 pp. Ceccoli. Naples. 1925. (Attack 

on De Stefani.) 

: II mio Fascismo. Ceccoli. Naples. 1925. 

Rocco, Alfredo: Che cos^e il Nazionalismo e cos a vogliono i nazionalisti. 
45 pp. Ultaliana. Rome, 1914. (Minister of Justice; nationalist 
leader; one of the most important leaders of the recent constitutional 
reforms.) 

: Ritorno del Medio Evo, and Crisi dello Stato e sindacati. In 

Politica, 1920. (These two articles are among the earliest expres- 
sions of fascist syndicalist theory.) 

: La Dottrina politica del fascismo. Aurora. Rome. 1925. 

Translated by Dino Bigongiari under the title The Political Doctrine 
of Fascism. Bulletin of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 
No. 223. Oct. 1926. 

: La Trasformazio?ie dello Stato. La Voce. Rome. 1927. (Im- 
portant exposition of the recent reforms.) 

Rossato, Arturo: Mussolini!^ Modernissima. Milan. 1919. 

Rossi, Cesare: II Memoriale Rossi, published in II Hondo, Decem- 
ber 27, 1924. Also in La Ricostruzione Fascista, pp. 167-179. Cor- 
bacdo. Milan. 1925. (One of Mussolini^s closest friends and lieu- 
tenants attacks Mussolini after the latter had caused his arrest for 
complicity in the Matteotti murder.) 

Rossoni, Edmondo: Le idee della ricostruzione. 106 pp. Bemporad. 
Florence. 1923. (The leader of fascist syndicalism. He has more 
practical than theoretical ability, as this volume shows. He has writ- 
ten a large number of articles in II Lavoro dlltalia and La Stirpe.) 

: Appunti per la Carta del Lavoro, in La Stirpe, January i, 1927, 

pp. 1-7. (His draft for the Labor Charter.) 

Russo, Domenico: Mussolini et Le Fascisme. 140 pp. Plon. Paris. 
1923. (Fair account of the early days.) 

Saltelli, Carlo: Pot ere esecutivo e norme ^uridkhe. Rome. 1926. 

Salvatorelli, Luigi: Naziondfascismo. 181 pp- Gobetti. Turin, 1923. 

Salvemini, Gaetano: II Ministro della mala vita. 136 pp. La Voce. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 


380 

Rome. 1919. (A distinguished historian, at first favorable to fas- 
cism, now an opposition leader. 

; Tendenze vecchie e necessitd nuove del movimento operaio Italic 

ano, 212 pp. Cappelll. Bologna. 1922. 

: Dal Patto di Londra alia Pace di Roma. 450 pp. Gobetti. Turin. 

1925- 

: The Fascist Dictatorship in Italy.. New York. 1927. (Contains 

a mass of otherwise unavailable material.) 

Sarfatti, Margherita G.: The Life of Benito Mussolini. 352 pp. Fred- 
erick A. Stokes. New York. 1925. (A translation and abridgement 
of her Italian Duxf^ Good for anecdotes, but otherwise has slight 
historical value. She is an intimate friend of Mussolini, formerly 
with him in II Popolo dTtalia, now editor of Gerarchia.) 

Scarfoglio, Edoardo: II Popolo dai cinque pasti. Brindisi a Mr. Asquith. 
203 pp. Mondadori. Milan. 1923. (A lively piece of southern 
energy directed against England. Formerly editor of Popolo di 
Roma.) 

Schotthofer, Fritz: II Fasdo. Sinn und Wirklichkek des Italienischen 
Faschismus. 224 pp. Frankfurt am Main. 1924. (Little essays, 
fairly critical, on the fascism of 1923.) 

Serpieri, Arrigo: La Politica Agraria in Italia e i recenti provvedimenti 
Legislativi. 284 pp. Federazione Italiana dei Consorzi Agrari. 
Piacenza. 1925. (In the Ministry of Agriculture. An excellent 
treatment of fascist agricultural policy, prefaced by a brief, but un- 
usually enlightening account of the rise of fascism.) 

: Problemi di Politica Agraria. 80 pp. Alberti. Rome. 1926. 

Settimelll, Emilio: Colpo di Stato fascista? 95 pp. Facchi. Milan. 
1923. (Squadrist and futurist point of view. See also his editorials 
in rimpero.) 

Signoretti, A.: See his many articles on syndicalism In Lavoro dLtalia 
and La Stirpe. 

Sofiici, Ardengo: Battaglie fra due vittorie. 21 1 pp. La Voce. Flor- 
ence. 1923. (Lively essays by a first rate fascist writer. Also an 
interesting preface by Curzio Suckert.) 

: Arte Fascista^ in Critica Fascista, October 15, 1926, pp. 383-4. 

Spampanato, Bruno; Divenire Fascista. 128 pp. Gente Nostra. 
Naples. 1924. (By a young Neapolitan fascist and journalist. Bet- 
ter than the average.) 

Spirito, Ugo: II Nuovo idealismo italiano. 120 pp. Alberti. Rome. 
1926. (Prominent among Gentile’s disciples.) 

: La Riforma del Diritto Penale. 80 pp. Alberti. Rome. 1926. 

Sturzo, (Don) Luigi: Indirizzi politici e riforme costituzionali. 332 pp. 
Vallecchi. Florence. 1923. (Popularist leader.) 

: Popularismo e Fascismo. 305 pp. Gobetti. Turin. 1924. 

: Pensiero antifascista. 280 pp. Gobetti. Turin. 1925. 

: Italy and Fascism. London. 1926. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 


381 

: The Italian Popular Party, in The Contemporary Review, June 

1926, pp. 730-737. (Outlines causes of the break between fascism 
and the Popular Party after their brief coalition.) 

Suckertj Curzoi (Malaparte) : La Rivolta del Santi maledetti. Second 
edition. 278 pp. Rassegna Internazionale. Rome. 1923. (A 
leader among the Vocist ” group. Sensationally orthodox fascist 
and radical Catholic. See also his journal La Conquista dello Stato.) 

: L^Europa vivente. Teoria storica del Sindacalismo nazionale, 

127 pp. La Voce, Florence. 1923. 

: Italia Barbara, 126 pp. Gobetti. Turin. 1926. (Among the 

best of strictly fascist literature.) 

: Arte Fascista, and other articles in La Conquista dello Stato, De- 
cember 15, 1926, p. 3. 

: V Arcitaliano, 1928. (A volume of lyrics.) 

Syndicalism, In Costruire, 1926. (A series of articles on fascist syn- 
dicalism.) 

Syndicalism, In Echi e CommentL 1925-6. (A series of discussions 
on fascist syndicalism.) 

Syndicalist theory. Series of articles in Rivista Internazionale di Filo- 
Sofia del Diritto, 1924—1926. (Especially the discussion between 
Panunzio and Costamagna.) 

Syndicates and Corporations, A number of valuable articles on this 
subject appeared in the following numbers of Critica Fascista: July 
15, 1926, p. 27s; August IS, 1926, p. 317; October 15, 1926, p. 395; 
November i, 1926, p. 407; and December i, 1926, p. 445. Also in 
Gerarchia, July 1926, p. 472. 


Tancredi, Libero: See Massimo Rocca. 

Trevelyan, G. M.: The historical causes of the present state of affairs in 
Italy. Oxford University Press. 1923. 

Triaca, Ubaldo: Le fascisme en Italie, 57 pp. Paris. 1927. 

Turati, Augusto: Ragioni ideali di vita fascista, 178 pp. Berlutti. 
Rome. 1926. (Speeches by the Secretary of the Party.) 

: Una Rivoluzione e un Capo, Berlutti. Rome. 1927. (More 

speeches.) 

Turati, Filippo: Le me maestre del socialismo. Bologna. 1921. (The 
reformist socialist leader, now exiled.) 

Uccelll, Oscar: II Fascismo nella Capitale della Rivoluzione, 78 pp. 
Campitelli. Foligno. 1924. 

Valente, Concetto: La ribellione antis ocidista di Bologna. 222 pp. 

Cappelli. Bologna. 1921. (By a nationalist participant.) 

Valli, Luigi: Scritti e discorsi della grande vigUia, Zanichelli. Bologna. 
1926. (A pioneer nationalist.) 



382 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


: II diritto dei popoli alia terra. Alpes. Milan. 1926. (Nation- 
alist doctrine for international relations.) 

VantaggiOj Luigi: Fascismo e Italia. Colletta. Messina. 1926. (An 
anthology.) 

Varisco, Bernardino: DzVcom PoKto*. 3i4pp- Alberti. Rome. 1926. 

(A prominent fascist idealist.) 

: La nuova Italia. Venice. 1927. 

Vecchi, Ferruccio: Arditismo Civile. Milan. 1920. (The leader of the 
Arditi.) 

Viana, Mario: Sind ac alls mo. 250 pp. Laterza. Bari. 1923. 

Villari, Luigi: The Awakening of Italy ^ the Fascist Regeneration. 
Methuen. London. 1924. 

VildXi-VLos 3 Lti^\Jnelt\ II sindacalismo agrario. 47 pp. Properzi. Fermo. 

1923. 

Vita Italiana. (This periodical has many useful articles during 1919- 
1922.) 

Voipe, Gioacchino: Fra Storia e Politica. 444 pp. Alberti. Rome. 

1924. (The leading fascist historian.) 

: U Italia che si fa. Alberti. Rome. 1927. 

: Per la nuova Italia. In Popolo d'ltalia, November 21, 1920. (An 

early formulation of doctrine.) 

Volt: Programma della Destra Fascista. 155 pp. La Voce. Florence. 
1924. {Nom de plume for Count Vincenzo Fani; died July 1927. A 
leader of the right wing. See also his numerous articles in Gerarchia, 
and Critica Fascista.) 

Zama, Piero: Fascismo e Religione. 39 pp. Imperia. Milan. 1923. 
Zeitschrift fur Politik. 1923. (Contains a number of good articles on 
fascism.) 

Zerboglio, Adolfo: with Dino Grandi. II Fascismo^ pp. 1-45. Cappelll. 

Bologna. 1922. (Contains Interesting references.) 

Zibordi, G.: See G. Bergamo. 

Zuccarini, Oliviero: Esperienze e Soluzioni. Libreria Politica Moderna. 
Rome. 1926. (Editor of a suppressed republican periodical.) 

: Problemi interni del fascismo. In Critica Politica^ October 25, 

1926. (See also reply to it in Critica Fascista, December i, 1926, pp. 

43 1-2- ) 


11. Periodicals 

I. Chief Fascist Political Journals. 

Critica Fascista: (1923— ). Bi-weekly. Rome. Giusseppe Bot- 

tai. Important especially on internal issues within the Party. Re- 
cently has published important series of articles on: Syndicalist 
Reforms. Reform of the Party Organization, Fascist Art (October 
1926 to March 1927), Fascist Philosophy. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 383 

II Diritto del Lavoro: (1927-- ). Monthly. Rome, Minister of 

Corporations. (Giuseppe Bottai.) This official journal of the cor- 
porations contains many of the most important articles On the 
corporate state and in addition has a bulletin of the official Acts and 
other documents related to the reform. 

Educazione Fascista: (1925- ). Monthly. Rome. Giovanni Gen- 

tile. Really a successor to Gentile's Nuova Politica Liberate, which, 
when he became head of the Istituto Fascista di Cultura (1925), was 
transformed into Educazione Politica and then (1927) on the wish of 
Mussolini into Educazione Fascista. It is the official organ of the 
Istituto Fascista di Cultura and is devoted chiefly to philosophical 
and historical studies. 

Gerarchia: (1922- ). Monthly. Milan. Margherita Sarfatti. 

Founded by Mussolini, still the chief political review of the Party. 
It carries departments on Religious Thought, Philosophic Thought, 
and Science, but these are Inferior to Its more strictly political ma- 
terial. 

Politica: (1919- ). Quarterly. Rome. Alfredo Rocco and Fran- 

cesco Coppola. Founded by the nationalists. Is far superior to any 
other fascist political journal. Specializes in foreign policy. Carries 
a useful record of events. 

Rassegna Italiana: Monthly. Rome. Tomaso Sillani. Not strictly 
speaking a fascist journal. It is a leading political and literary review. 
Is dominated by the nationalist point of view, imperialistic, and has 
a special colonial section. Contains many of the most important na- 
tionalist articles since the war. 

Rivista Internationale di Filosofia del Diritto. Monthly. Rome. 
Giorgio del Vecchio. Not strictly speaking fascist. A standard jour- 
nal of the philosophy of law, edited by the fascist rector of the Univer- 
sity of Rome. Contains many important technical discussions on fas- 
cist theory of the state. 

IL Lesser Political Journals. 

La Conquista dello Stato: (1923- ). Bi-weekly. Rome. Curzio 

Malaparte (Suckert). At one time a leading “ integralist ” paper; 
but now more or less personal propaganda against the type of fascist 
represented by UImpero. A lively sheet of high class polemics. 

La Corporazione: Weekly. Genoa. Guido Pighetti, 

Costruire: ). Monthly. Pisa. Darioski (Dario Lischi). 

II Giornale di Politica e di Lett eratur a: (1925— ). Monthly. Pisa. 

Raffaello Giusti and Umberto Biscottini. 

L'ltaliano: ). Weekly. Bologna. Leo Longanesi. This is 

really Soffici's paper and^ like Suckert^s La Conquista dello Stato, is 
chiefly bent on ridiculing certain squadrist types. 

La Montagna: (1925-1926). Bi-weekly. Naples. Bruno Spampana to. 
Fascist review, now discontinued. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 


384 

La Rivolta Ideale: Weekly. Rome. Antonio Beltramelli. Organ of 
groups of Fascist students in the universities. 

II Selvaggio: Florence. Mino Maccari. Another one of the Vo:ist 
group of journals. 

Lo Stato Corporativo: (1926“ ). Monthly. Rome. P. Marica, 

Lissia, Santangelo. A new journal devoted to the legal aspects of the 
corporate reforms. Costamagna is one of its leading spirits. 

Vita Nova: {ig2^- ). Monthly. Bologna. G. Saitta. The journal 

of the Fascist University of Bologna. Has an appendix of printed 
'' lessons ” in fascist studies for university students. 

III. Popular Reviews. 

II iQig: Monthly. Milan. Mario Giampaoli. By the Old Guard of 
Milan. Has compiled a superficial history of Milan fascism. 

La Rivista del Popolo dNtalia: Monthly. Milan. The illustrated maga- 
zine of the Popolo d^Italia. 

La Stirpe: Monthly. Rome. Edmondo Rossoni. Illustrated 
magazine of the Confederation of Syndicates. Contains many 
important articles on syndicalism by Rossoni, Signoretti, and 
others. 

Avanguardia: Bi-weekly. Rome, Renato Ricci. Juvenile journal. 

II Balilla: Weekly. Ferrara. Mario Barbieri. Juvenile journal. 

IV. Propaganda Weeklies. 

(Every town, almost, has Its propaganda sheet, run by the local 
fascio. Many of these have been suppressed, being over-abundant 
and often irresponsible. We list here only a few of the principal ones. 
There are such periodicals also in many of the Italian centers in foreign 
countries.) 

L^Assalto: Bologna. Giorgio Pini, 

Battaglie Fasciste: Florence. Gherardo Casini. 

Corner e Latino: Rome. Nicolo Maraini. 

II Nazionale: Turin. Pietro Gorgolini. 

La Patria: Rome. Renato Manzini. 

Roma Fascista: Rome. Guglielmotti and Foschi. 

V. Chief Fascist Daily Newspapers. 

(In a sense all papers are fascist, in that none are anti-fascist. Those 
given here are explicitly fascist and have national significance. The 
more local papers we cannot enumerate.) 

Popolo dAtalia: Milan and Rome. Arnaldo Mussolini. Still the most 
important, though less authoritative than when Benito Mussolini 
directed it personally. 

La Tribuna. Rome. Forges-Davanzati and others. Fused with the 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 385 

Idea Nazionale of Corradini, and now one of the best papers of 
E ome. 

II Lavoro Italia: Rome. Rossoni. The organ of fascist syndicalism. 

A good paper and enjoys a large circuiation. 

Ulmpero: Rome. Carli and Settimelli. The imperialist, squadrist, 
futurist journal. Headquarters of jingoism. 

Cremona Nuova: Cremona. Farinacci. Farinacci’s famous sheet. 
One of the pioneers of fascism. Rivals UImpero for violence. 

These are nationally important. They still fall behind such famous 
papers as II Corriere della Sera (Milan) and II Giornale d'ltalia (Rome), 
which, though they have lost their political independence, still keep up 
a distinguished journalism. 

Chief among the Catholic papers are UOsservatore Romano (Rome), 
and Corriere Italiano (Rome). 

VI. Non-fascist Periodicals. 

(Among the few non-fascist periodicals that have not been suppressed, 
the following contain important discussions of fascism.) 

La Critica: Monthly. Naples. Benedetto Croce. This is the foremost 
philosophical periodical of Italy. It also contains a number of polemic 
and critical articles on fascism. In general friendly until 1924, since 
then hostile. 

La Critica Sociale: Bi-weekly. Milan. Zibordi. (Now suppressed) 
Especially a series of articles by Zibordi, Treves, Matteotti, and others 
on fascism in Numbers 4-9, 1921-1922. 

La Riforma Sociale: Ed. Senator Luigi Einandi. Turin. 

L^Observateur. Bulletin du Comite Italien de Bruxelles, (No. i, 
March 1928.) Opposition propaganda directed by F. Ferrari, Arturo 
Labriola and A. Zanetti. 




INDEX 


Abruzzi, 47 
Abyssinia, 32 /. 

Acerbo, G., 71, 88, 127 
Action FrangaisCy The, 4, 149, 218 
Adua, 2 

Advance Guard, The, 13 1, 133/., 223, 
250 

Agnoletti, 68, 70, 133, 297/. 
Agriculture, 42, 154, 170/., 172, 187/., 
210 ff. 

Albania, 30, 34 
Albertini, Senator, 87, 96 
Alfieri, 21 
Amendola, 310/. 

America, 27, 276/,, 286/. 

Anarchism, 66 

Anti-clerical, 61, 67, 218, 238 
Aosta, Duke of, 82 
Arditi, 44 60 /., 64, 270, 313 

Arditi del Fofoloy 45 
Aristocracy, 157 251, 281 /. 

Art, Fascist, 242#*, 264, 266 ff., 358 ff. 
Austria, i, 3, 7, 8, 10, 12, 15, 17, 29 /. 
Avanti, V, 7/., 12, 64, 95, 310, 315 
Aventine Secession, The, 92 97 

106, 128, 310, 316 f. 

Balbo, L, 77, 81, 117, 133, 136, 312 
Balilla, The, 133 /., 223 /., 329 
Balkans, 17, 30, 33 
Banchelli, U., 50 ff., 288/. 

Banishment, 98 

Bastianini, G., 70, n8, 310#., 366 
Battisti, C., 7, 9 
Berta, G., 50 

Bianchi, M., 14, 70, 81, 85, 116/-, 126, 
133 j 145/-, 308 
Birth Control, 39 /. 

Birth-rate, 4, 39/. 

Bissolati, 49 

Black Shirts, 45, 135 /. 

Blanqui, 9 231 

Blue Shirts, 44 


Bodrero, E., 222, 366 
Bologna, 47 
Bolzano, 14, 50, 80 
Bolzon, P., 56 ff., 242, 366 
Bonomi, I., no, 316 
Bottai, A., 14 

Bottai, G., 56, 71, 121, 132/., 195, 198 

Boycotts, 43 

Bureaucracy, 99 f., i 47 > 1^3 /•> 3o6> 

328 

Capello, General, 54> 97 

Caporetto, 15 /., 19, 44 

Carli, M., 55, 61, 121, 242, 251, 281 ff. 

Casalini, A., 95 

Castelli, 56 

Catholic Church, The, 22, 27, 89, 216 
221 /., 224, 353 ff., 357, 368 
Catholicism, 21/., 39, 73, 84, 102, 105, 
149/., 217#., 223#., 232, 238, 240, 

29^) 3^95 353 #* 

Catholic Scouts, The, 223/. 

Cavazzoni, 85 
Chamberlain, 33 

Chambers of Labor, 42, 48, 65/,, 143, 
176, 291 

Classe dirigente, 5, 131 /., 156, 251 
Class struggle, 6, 37, 141, 15^ #•> ^55 #• 
Coalition Government, 60/,, 73, 85#,, 
90, 114, 303 #• 

Collective Contracts, 159, 177, 182/., 
190, 199, 209, 333 /• 

Colonies, 36 135 

Commissariati delle Ofere, 164 
Commission for Constitutional Reform, 
94, 99/., 163, 174#*, 17S#., 1S2, 

1 ^ 9 , 191, 32^1 #- 

Communism, 74, 95, 144, ^ 7 i> ^75 /•, 
291, 298 

Confederation of Fascist Syndicates, 114, 
144, 146 ff., 155#-, 166#*, 170 
i8i 190/,, 196/,, 202, 204, 208, 
244, 334 #•> 338#. 



INDEX 


388 

Confederation of Industry, General Fas- 
cist, 171, 185, 188/., 192/., 

^ 9^5 337 #^ 

Confederation of Labor, General, 139/*, 
i 43 > 213 
Con fort o, R., 50 
Consulte municlfali^ 100 
Cooperatives, 163/., 193, 195 
Coppola, F., 24, 102, X45, 277 /. 

Corfu, 32 

Corgini, O,, 119, 170, 308 
Corporations, 145 Jf., 150, 159, 161, 163, 
165#., 17s, 177, l8o, 190#., 193#., 
325#., 333 #-, 338#- 
Corradini, E., 3 /., 5, 26, 84, 102 /., 125, 
145, 148, 343 

Corridoni, F., 8/., 14, 60, 141 148, 

354 

Corriere della Sera^ 96, 315 
Corsica, 33 #. 

Costamagna, C., 161, 176 
Cremona, 49, 3x3 
Crispi, F., X z6y 33, 99, 250 
Critlca Fascista, 38, 121, 132, 200, 237, 
338#., 358#. 

Croce, B., 21, 23/., 102, 105/., 148, 
151, 160, 232, 235, 240/., 246, 358, 
360 /., 368 

Cuoco, V., 2X, 24, 15 1 

Dalmatia, 14, 28, 32/., 58, 60, 81, 274 
d’Annunzio, 20, 44, 54, 67, 68, 74, 76, 
78, 145, 147/-, 23^3 244, 246, 

268, 271, 282 
Daiite, 23 /., X02, 109 
Dante Alighieriy The, 4 
D^^ragona, 165, 213 
De Ambris, A., ii, 14, 139, 143, 147 
De Bonald, 4, X02 
De Bono, 81, 126, 133, 310 #. 

Decrees, 94, 100, 195, 208#., 249 
De Maistre, 4, 102 
Democracy, 24#., 28, 58, 78, 83, lox 
125, 150, 15^/*, 175/-, 204, 274, 282, 
285, 298 /., 306, 323 /., 330, 341 /. 
Depretis, i /,, 250 
De Revel, Admiral Thaon, 8 5 
De Sanctis, F., 105 
De Stefani, A., 71, 85, 124, 127, 167 
174, 208, 2X0, 298 328 

De Vecchi, 79, 81, 1 17 /. 


Diaz, General, 85, 136 
Disarmament, 29/., 277/. 

Discipline, 5, 15 41, 104, 2 48 

Dissidence, 117 308 jf. 

Di Staso, II 
Dodecanese Islands, 32 
Dofolavoroy 164, 193 
Duguit, 149, 161 

Dumini, A,, 50#,, 68, 126, 288#., 
310#. 

Durkheim, 149 

Education, zziff., 235/., 352 
Elections, 90, 124 

Electoral Reform, 80, 88, 94/., no/., 
201, 204#., 323 331, 339 

Emigration, 5, 36, 283 
Emigres, Anti-fascist, 33, 98 
Emilia, 42#., 47 #•> 69, 165 
Employment Bureaus, 199/., 335/. 
England, 3, 18, 27, 31#., 273, 276#.! 
300 

Expansion, iff., 17, 26, 35#. 

Fabbri, 56 
Facta, 8x /. 

Factory occupation, 6x #. 

Farinacci, R., 49> 75> 124, 127#., 

136, 165, i 73 > 1875 ii 3 > 313 #•> 

370 

F«#d d’azione rivolu^onaria, 13/. 
^sci di combattiimntOy 28, 53, 56 66, 

76, 79, 1x5, 134, 270, 301 
Fasci Futuristi, 5$ 

Fasci Nazionaliy 120/. 

Fascioy 8, 13 /., 44, 47, 50, 54#., 68, 97, 
100, 114, 362 

Fascist Party, The National, 67 #., 71 /., 
76#., 92, 94, 113#., 123#., 130#., 
146, 162, 16S f., 173, 190, 196, 

202#., 20S, 297, 305#., 317#. 
Fascist philosophy, 40/., 57/., 66/., 
76/., 78, 83/., loi#., 146, ISO#., 
205, 230#., 247#., 265#., 271/., 
275/-, 29*1 328#-, 341 #., 344 #-, 
354 #., 357/- 
Fatalism, 19/. 

Fedele, 127 

Federzoni, L., 36, 85, 92, 95, xoo, 102, 

127#., 370 

Ferrara, 48 /. 



INDEX 389 


Ferrero, G., no " 

Filipelli, 124, 126, 315 
Financial policy, 167/., 207/., 301/., 
316, 328, 337 
Finzi, 126, 310 ff, 

Fiume, 14, 28, 32, 44, 58, 68, 145, 148, 
274j 290 

Florence, 50#., 68, 288/. 

Foreign policy, i, 5, 27#., 116, 153, 
300/. 

Forges-Davanzati, R., 102, 124, 127, 
145, 214, 234 

Forni, 120/., 170, 308, 311 /. 

Fortunate, G., 18 

France, i, 18, 21, 33, 37 41, 240, 273, 

276#., 300 

Freddi, L., 56, 69, 133 
Freemasons, 50, 54, 96/., 156, 238, 
345 

French Revolution,,;i5, 84, 112, 150, 
158/., I97> 238/., 263, 332 
Futurism, 8, 50, 55/., 61, 67, 218, 
^33#-, 242/., 246, 260 ff.y 361#. 

Garibaldi, 13, 68, 76, 141, 150, 230 
Gayda, V., 280 f. 

Gentile, G., 7, 23, 25, 85, 102, 106#., 
121, 125, 127, 151, 215, 220#., 231, 
234#., 238, 240/., 249, 321, 328, 
344#-, 358, 370 

GerarcMa, 237, 242, 281, 342, 383 
Germans in Italy, 50 
Germany, 2/., 12, 24, 27#., 30, 33, 
59, 162, 232, 276, 299, 347, 360/. 
Gibelli, M., 14 

Gioberti, 21 23, 105 /., 240 

Giolitti, G,, 3, 46, 55> 63, 68, 71 /., 79> 
86, 88, 94> I43> 202, 250, 258, 269, 

315 

Giordani, G., 48 

Giomale d^ItaliUy The, 9 > 96, 311 
Giovinezzay 41, 250 /. 

Giuffrida, G., 14 

Giunta, F., 50, 69, 117, 123/., 126, 
i33> 309#- 

Giurati, 85 
Govi, 162 

Grandi, B., 76/., i45> 

372 

Greece, 17, 31 

Grey Shirts, 44 


Gruff i di Comfetenzay 122, 162/., 169, 
176, 301 

Hegelian philosophy, 22 105/., 151, 

213, 220 

Hierarchy, 10 1, 104 
Hungary, 34/. 

NazionaUy 3, 149 

Idealism, 20#., 28, 50, 83, 102, 105#., 
108, 148, 151, 232, 344#-j 358 
Imperialism, i 6, 17/., 24/., 28, 
3 1 37 41, 245, 253, 273, 278 

283 

ImferOy L\ 26, 33, 133, 241, 281, 311 
Institute of Culture, National Fascist, 
215, 383 

Integral Fascism, 122 
Integralist Syndicalism, 157#., i7^/*> 
i 77 > 179 /•> ^96 

Intellectuals, 5, 55, 97, 173, 184, 230#., 
245 j 3 ^ 7 ) 351 
International Morality, 38 
Internationalism, 12, 25, 28/., 229/., 
268, 274#. 

Interventionism, i, 8, ii, 15, 17, 5°? 

57) ^7) 258#. 

Intransigent Fascism, 35, 12S/., 133, 
167, 313#- 
Irredentism, 7 

irredenfay 1, 4 
7/«/^ Libera 97, 310 

Journalism, Fascist, 237 382^, 

Jubaland, 32 
Judicial reform, 99, 328 
Jugoslavia, 30, 33/., 4I) ^75> 284 

Labor Charter, 195, 197#., 209, 214, 

33^#*) 338/. 

Labor policy, Fascist, 58/., 61, 66/., 
76, 146#., 155#-, 159/-) 1^2) 165#., 
172/., 174, 177#*) 197#-) 

301/*) 330/*) 333 #-) 337#* 

Labor Tribunals, 18 1, 184#,, 197, 199, 

333 #- 

Labriola, A., 138/., i43) I45) 213 
Lanzillo, A., ii, 146 
League of Nations, The, 27 210, 

274, 276, 278 /. 

Legislation, Fasdst, 97, 99#-, 13^5 



390 


INDEX 


■178#-, i9S> 202, 249, 329, 331/., 

$39 f- 

Leone, E., 138 /., 145 

Liberalism, io6, no, 167, 214, 253, 

198 #•> 341 ff; 346/. 

Liberals, The, 6, 76, 83, 85#., 175, 
218, 299 

Liberty, 16, 95, 106^., no, 258, 264/., 

3055 3^1 #0 343 #• 

Locarno, 29, 33 /. 

Long-obardi, n 

Lybian War, see Tripoli War 

Machiavelli, 23/., 102, 109, in, 231, 
358 

Maffia, The, 100 
Malaparte, see Suckert, C. 

Malta, 31 

Maraviglia, 102, 127 
March on Rome, The, 27, 81#., 114, 
i39> ^47^ 3=^7 

Mare Nostrum policy, 26 
Marinelli, G., 117, 124, 126, 133 
Marinetti, F. T., 8, 15, 55 67, 233 

242/., z6q ff., 282, 160 f. 

Marsich, P., 76 

Marxism, 18, 138/., 149, 153, 213, 231 
Masotti, T,, 14 

Matteotti, 27, 91, 95, 117, 126, 173, 

313#- 

Maurras, 4 

Mazzini, G., 3, 21, 23, 28, 76, 106, 141, 
150/., 218, 231, 345 #.9 358 
Mediterranean, 5, 17, 26, 31/*, 60, 

^77/. 

Melchiorri, A., 69, 124, 127 
Merchant Marine, 31/. 

Miglioli, 49 

Milan, 54#., 62, 69/., 71/., 73/., 75, 
77, 115, 2^5 

Militarism, 4, 30, 41, 246 
Militia, The Fascist, 78/., 134#, 
Ministry of Corporations, 133, 191, 

193 19^#*, 200, 202, 204, 209, 

332 

Misuri, A., 52, 70#, 77, 117#., 123, 

134, 144/., 305#,, 308#., 311#. 
Modernism, 76, 240 
Monarchists, 72, 125 
Mussolini, B., 6#,, 10, 13#., 16/., 19, 
24, 2<5/., 31, 33, 35, 39, 48, 56, 62, 


68/., 71#-, 76/., 81, 84#., 90#., 
106/., 109/., 1 16, 122/,, 127#., 
137, 185, 187#., 193, 195, 

201/., Z07/., 210, 218, 220, 225, 
227/., 230#,, 234, 241, 245, 247/-, 
250, 253, 257#., 271, 274#., 283, 
285, 294, 302#., 305#-, 310 #•> 

341 /•> 346, 357 /•> 375 
Mussolinism, 115, 123, 125 

National Congresses, Fascist, 66/., 75, 
77, 81, 146, 218 

Nationalism, 26, 76, 102#., 148, 269 
Nationalist Association, 3, 44, 102 /., 376 
Nationalist Theory, 4/., 102#., 343/. 
Nationalists, i, 4, 6, 17, 24, 32/., 44, 
71, 85, 92, 102#., 108, 125, 127, 145, 
150, 173 

Navy, Italian, 30. 

New Italy, The, 25, 248, 344#* 

Nice, see Savoy 

Nitti, F. S., 19/., 46, 97, i35, ^74, 316 

^‘Old Guard” Movement, 115, 125 

Olivetti, A. 0., 14, 146, 151/-, 176 

Orano, P., 146 

Oriani, 231 /., 281 

Orlando, 94, 97, 315 

Orviglio, 85 

Osservatore RoTnano, 219 

Pact of Pacification, 72, 74/. 

Pact of the Vidoni Palace, 177, 183 
Palestine, 32 

Panunzio, S., n, 146, 149, 151, 

173, 181, 185, 215, 377 
Paolucci, 44> 71 
Papa, D., 14 

Papini, G., 7, ii, 232, 244 
Pareto, V., 102, 231, 282 
Parliament, 4, 15, 26 f., 71, 73, 78#., 
*5#-, 9°) 94> 98, 103/-, to5) iu/-j 
118/., 17S, 185#., aoi, 20$ f., 262, 
269/., 30Z#., 321 339 

Parma, 48 

Pasella, U., 68#., 114, 289 
Fatria e LtbertUy 1 1 9 
Patriotic Associations, 44 /. 

Patriotic celebrations, 226 /. 

Pellizzi, C., 27, 131/., 240/-, 251/-) 
$51 



INDEX 


Perrone, D., 70, 125, 291 
Perug-ia, 52, 70, 74, 119, 225, 245 
Pighetti, G., 70/., 117/., 145 
176 

Pirelli, 70, 293 
Pisa, 50, 97 
Pisacane, 141, 150 
Podesta^ 100 

PoUtica^ La, 24/., 150, 237, 383 
Pofolo (Pltaliay 11 ^ 13, 53, 58/., 

62, 66, 75, 219, 242, 257, 275 /., 311, 

384 

Popular Party, The, 49, 54, 71 /., 80, 
85#-^ 1^5) 167, 174, 217, 221 
Prefects, 100/. 

Press, The, 33, 95/., 316, 384/. 
Preziosi, G., 162 

Prezzolini, G., 7, 9, ii, 14, 244, 378 
Primacy of Italy, The Moral, 21, 37, 
269, 284 
Pro Patria, 44 
Pro Trento e Trieste^ The, 4 
Puglia, 44, 54 

Punitive expeditions, 46, 64, 289#. 

Rapallo, Treaty of, 20, zz-i *j 6 
RaSy 49, 10, 116, 12 1, 313 
Red Guards, 45 
Red Leagues, 42, 49 
Religion, 5, 216#., 221#., 224/., 

228/., 247#., 348, 353 /-, 357 /- 
Republicans, 4, 13, 47> /., 72, 74, 

143, 147, 218, 274/. 

Resto del Carlino, The, 9 
Revolution, The Fascist, 12, 56, 79#., 
288#., 302, 314/., 327/- 
Rhodes, 32 

RisorgimentOj The, i, 23 /., 33, 67, 83 /., 
102, 106, 136, 141, 151, 238, 240, 
i99> 345 355 /- 

Rocca, M., 76, 84, 122 162, 168, 170, 

218, 239/. 

Rocco, A., 24, 92, 99, 102, 127, 145, 

ug/., 173, 179#-, 185, 189/., 196, 

250. 327 #• 

Romagna, 6, 13, 43 #•, 47 #•, 165 

Rome, 17, 20, 22, 25, 37, 67, 78, 80, 
102, 112, 158, 226, 229/., 240, 244, 
298, 302, 363 
Rosmini, 21 
Rossato, A., n 


391 

Rossi, C., 70, 72, 75, 95, 1 14, 1 1 7, 124, 
126, 168, 310 ff. 

Rossoni, E., 36, 114, 122, 142/., 146/., 

155 #-j 163#-, 168#., 174#-, 179 #•> 

igi#-) 195#-, 209/., 332 
Roumania, 34/, 

Ruhr, Occupation of, 33 
Russia, 30#., 34/., 56, 78, 154, 279, 
284 

Sala, 120, 308 
Salandra, ii, 94, 315 
Salvemini, G., ii 
Sarzana, 74, 294#. 

Savoy and Nice, 33 
Scimola, 45 
Semfre Pronti, 44 

Senate, Italian, 67, 86, 98, 162, 304/. 
Serbia, 7 

Settimelli, 15, 55, 121, 242, 250 
Sforza, Count, 33 
Sicily, 100 
Siena, 52 

Socialism, 12, 18, 42, 76, 102, 104, 148, 
150, 153) 213#., 257#., 265, 275/., 
299 

Socialist Party, 4, 6, 9, 13, 42, 47, 60, 
66, 71#., 74 #., 80, 97 , 138#., 143, 
165, 176, 257#., 275 
Socialist Revolution 1919—20, 42/., 
62 

SofEci, A., 121, 237, 244, 259, 276/., 
358#. 

Sonnino, 45 

Sorel, G., 5, 10, 139, 141, 148/., 151, 
158, 176, 181, 229, 231, 240, 353#. 
Sorgue, Madame, 14 
South, The, 18, 54, 87, loi 
Spain, 30, 33 
Spaventa, B., 21 23, 99 

Spaventa, Silvio, 105 
Squadrism, 42/., 50, 63#., 79, 97, 
1 14, 1 17, 135, 166, 288/., 313, 347 
State, The Fascist ITieory of the, loi f., 
toy f., no/., 112/., 160/., 206 f., 
212 f., 220, 241/., 32% f., 332, 342, 
348#. 

Strike, 43, 64, 79, 139 /•, 147, 1 54 , 
189/., 265 

Stnrzo, Don, 87/., 2x7/. 

Suardo, loo, 195 



INDEX 


392 

Suckert, C. (Malaparte), 84, 106, 12 1, 
1335 I54> 237/-, 253> 353 3^1 

Switzerland, 31 

Sj^dicalism, 120, 138#., 137#., 169#., 
179#., 200, 204, 214, 301, 33 o#-j 
333 33S#.; 354 

Syndicalists, 4, 8, 37, 61, 76, 139 143, 

150 

Syria, 35 /. 

Tangiers Conference, 33 
Teruzzi, 1 1 7 /, 

Thoiry Agreements, 33/. 

Tolomei, E., 4 
Trentino, 7 
Treves, 9 
Trihunay 3 
Trieste, i 4 ) 50j 275 
Triple Alliance, 2, 9, 12 
Triple Entente, 2, 31, 33 
Tripoli, 2, 32, 36 

Tripoli War (Lybian War of 1911), 
I7> 37? ^3? 140 
Tunis, 33 #•, 36 /* 

Turati, A*, 13, 128 
Turati, F., 9, 72, 86, 139 
Turin, 62 

Turkey, 31/., 34/. 

Tuscany, 44, $1 /., 69 
Tyrol, 4 

Ucelli, 70 
Umbria, 52#., 69 

Ifnione Itcdiano del Lavoro, 59, 61, 
143 #- 


Unione Sindacale del Lavoro, 705 

144 

United States, The (See also America), 
Zh 279/- 

Valli, L., 38 
Vecchi, 55 64 

Venetia, 50 

Versailles Treaty, 17#., 24, 60, 274, 
276 #. 

Veterans’ Association, 44/., 60, 136 
Vico, Giam Battista, 20, 23 
Victor Emmanuel III, 82 
Vidali, G., 14 

Violence, 43/., 63, 117, 125, 347/. 

Vittorio Veneto, 15, 17 

Voce, La, 7, 121, 232, 244, 361 f. 

Volpi, Count, 208 
Volt, 121, 169, 239, 242 

War, 6 f., 35, 38 ff., 247, 258 268 /., 

276, 285/. 

Washington Agreements, 30, 275, 277 
White Leagues, 49 

Wilson, Woodrow, 7, 18, 28, 38, 102, 
273, 276, 278/. 

World War, 6, ii/., 15, 17, 24, 56/., 
66, 83, 140, 142/., 246} 258 #-j 
268 /., 274, 283 /. 

Yemen, 32, 36 

Zamboni, 53, 70, 289 
Zaniboni, 95 





















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